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Networking the Redwoods
linuxwrangler writes "SF Gate is reporting that ecology researchers are outfitting a grove of trees with tiny "micromote" sensors to monitor the light, humidity and other conditions as the trees grow. The sensors, running the open-source Tiny OS, form and maintain their own network. This test of the "Smart Dust" concept (mentioned on /. earlier) only uses 50 sensors but scientists hope to be able to deploy the sensors on a large scale to help figure out why California's Redwoods are dying off at an alarming rate."
Yes, but do they run Linux?
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!!
In Soviet Russia, the redwoods network you!
Place smart sensors in the woods!
?????
Profit.
Does that include the $699 SCO license fee?
to help figure out why California's Redwoods are dying off at an alarming rate.
Umm, last time I was in the area a few months ago, given the amount of pollution and traffic in the Bay area and north of the Bay area, I am not surprised the redwoods are dying off.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
...if a tree falls in those woods, and no one is around to hear it. Would it still make a sound?
20 mil and I will! Learn Esperanto with 20M others.
... to help figure out why California's Redwoods are dying off at an alarming rate.
Probably has nothing to do with Aaaarnold and the rest of the celebs driving around in diesel guzzling
Hummers.
Maybe they're dying because people keep trying to strap boxes to them, measuring temperature, humidity and who knows what else.
Wouldn't that be ironic.
Scientists have found out that the reason that the redwoods are dying is because of a lot of sensors being fitted to the trees and radio traffic networks between them. This has been confirmed by sensors and radio networks between them.
"I used to have that really cool,funny sig
I knew nature had to hate SUVs.
It doesn't fucking help that we chopped down a great deal of California's redwoods. Gee I wonder who's fault it is that they're disappearing, eh?
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
Who needs Kyoto, period? Mostly just people like Johnny Cretin (mispelling intentional) who need a legacy. Otherwise it's just a waste of resources directed at the wrong problem.
Take a look at this: (http://www.scienceagogo.com)
"14 August 2003
Cosmic Rays The Biggest Culprit In Global Warming
Global warming will not be reduced much by efforts to limit carbon dioxide emission into the atmosphere, say two scientists.
Dr. Nir Shaviv, an astrophysicist from the Racah Institute of Physics of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Prof. Jan Veiser a geochemist at the University of Ottawa in Canada, say that temperature variations are due more to cosmic forces than to the actions of man.
In a recent article published in GSA Today, the journal of the Geographic Society of America, Shaviv and Veiser tell of their studies illustrating a correlation between past cosmic ray flux - the high-energy particles reaching us from stellar explosions - and long-term climate variability, as recorded by oxygen isotopes trapped in rocks formed by ancient marine fossils. The level of cosmic ray activity reaching the earth and its atmosphere was reconstructed using another isotopic record in meteorites.
The study showed that peak periods of cosmic rays reaching the earth over the past 550 million years coincided with lower global temperatures, apparently due to the way that the cosmic rays promote low-level cloud formation, hence blocking out the sun. No correlation was obtained, however, with the changing amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
The conclusion of the two scientists is that celestial processes seem to be the dominant influence on climate change, and that increased carbon dioxide release, while certainly not beneficial, is only secondary to those forces which are beyond our control.
In practical terms, says Dr. Shaviv, "The operative significance of our research is that a significant reduction of the release of greenhouse gases will not significantly lower the global temperature, since only about a third of the warming over the past century should be attributed to man." Thus, say the scientists, the Kyoto accord of 1997 - which was aimed at tackling the global warming phenomenon through limitations on carbon dioxide - is not the panacea some thought it would be.
Taking the long-range view, Dr. Shaviv and Prof. Veiser believe that fluctuations in cosmic ray emissions account for about 75 percent of climate variation throughout the millennia. They acknowledge that this position pits them against prevailing scientific opinion, which still places a heavy emphasis on the negative role of greenhouse gases. "
Ok, so how many of us followed the link to Tiny OS but didn't go to the actual article? ;-)
How long till one of those tree hugging hacker hippies from Berkeley finds a way to DOS the woods rendering the whole project useless.
The concept is new and untested, but I think we might see surprising results.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
SCO sued all trees for their use of "open-source" software, which is by definition the property of said company.
In a suit paralleling this one, SCO also sued all of humanity for intaking the air that was produced by biological plant-based systems that utilized code in violation of SCO's terms of agreement.
"A deepness in the sky", the prequel to the popular "A fire upon the deep" by Vernor Vinge, has these things in action in a cool application. (This is a Sci-fi book, just to clarify)
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
This isn't going to help us that much in figuring out why these redwoods are dying, because we have no climate conditions from when they weren't dying at an alarming rate to compare the current ones to. I'm not saying they won't be damned useful, but how about we sensor-network the things we would like to preserve before it's too late?
"I attribute the symptoms of stress seen in thee rfiles/The_Green_Scene2693.pdf)
redwoods around Bakersfield to the fundamental differences in soil acidity," (http://ucce.ucdavis.edu/counties/cekern/newslett
Acidity as we all know can be increased by adding liquified SO4 (I think that's the one) which is a common pollutant (and other such harmful chemicals).
It may not be as simple as this, but pollution is more than just a few degree C temperature increases. Pollution has also altered weather patterns: here in BC we are seeing record minumum rainfall, year after year (a place that's supposed to be wet like Seattle), in other parts of the world they are seeing record maximum rainfall. (Sorry no scientific bases for this.
This is turn changes the soil the trees are used to and kills them, be it not allowing enough nutriets to go deep enough or the acidity killing the plants (like what happens in the east)
Here in BC I'm noticing more and more moss growing on our lawn and less grass, we haven't changed anything...
Am I saying that this tells the whole story or that I even know anything about redwoods, but don't discredit Kyoto + pollution = killer by just what a few scientists say about global warming, and I haven't heard a more logical explanation for the increase in temperatures I've seen myself.
Since I'm sure most of /. is more interested in coding a 1 square inch sensor than protecting a 300 foot tree, here's some programming background on the little bastards (which I work with on a daily basis, as part of a sensor network research group in a VA university).
- the architecture
The motes run 4MHz or 8MHz processors, with built in memory. The amount of memory varies across mote models (currently Rene, Rene2, Mica, Mica2, Mica2Dot, and SmartDust) but we're talking 16KB to 128KB of program memory, 4KB to 16KB of data memory, and 4Kb to 8KB EEPROM for permanent storage. They have a short range radio capable of I believe 10kbps, and use an active message model to provide what we know as "ports", so that you can direct a message to a specific handler based on its message type. The packet sizes top out at 36 bytes. The motes are powered by two AA batteries, which can last a surprisingly long time if the radio is put to sleep. Your main means for debugging: 3 LEDs ... you can begin to imagine the headaches I face on a daily basis.
- the bridge
When deployed, most motes are programmed with routing protocols to autonomously establish networks, which are used for data aggregation and getting sensor readings around. The network is rooted at a basestation, a "powerful" PC without the restricted computation, communication and power limitations of a mote. This way any complex processing is offloaded to the PC, and the motes don't waste battery power doing stuff the PC can do instead. So what bridges this mote network to a PC? Well, it's a programming board. You plug a mote directly into the thing, and you hook up a db-25 to your parallel port, and a db-9 to your serial port. The parallel port is used to program the mote's instruction memory, and the serial port is used to receive messages sent by the mote to the PC. The mote that's hooked up to the programming board is loaded with code to translate RF packets to UART, and vice versa.
- sensing
Motes are equipped with 10-bit resolution ADC sensors which can read light and temperature. Other sensor boards can be hooked up to motes to read vibration, acceleration, and a bunch of other stuff. The motes commonly read their sensors, stuff the data in a packet, and send it along to the basestation for processing. That's the generic application model, at least.
- security
The main part of our research deals directly with implementing security in the sensor networks. This is far from easy, since you can't even store a public/private key in the mote's limited memory, let alone do anything with it. The protocols used are complex, involving securely distributing keys, efficient authentication protocols, and all this in 16KB of program memory (on Rene2s) INCLUDING the operating system! Just remember that the point isn't to stop a mote from being compromised, it's to realize it's compromised and drop it from the network. There are supposed to be thousands of motes in the network after all, so dropping a bunch won't hurt.
---
Here's hoping that background will help avoid the mass privacy paranoia that we /. readers love so much. At the time of this writing, motes aren't small enough or cheap ($250) enough to produce en masse, nor are they tiny enough to go unnoticed (remember the 2 AA batteries?). Yes, there are exceptions, but 1 square inch are the smallest production versions I know of (Mica2dots). And until they stop running on batteries, their biggest hindrance is their short lifetime, so they currently can't be constantly monitoring anything for months on end.
Aside: Take a look at the Spec. It could change that whole last paragraph. :)
As for the military surveillance stuff, that's what motes are ultimately designed for, to be dropped on
*blinking cursor*
Do we even need to bother doing this research to know why they are dying?
They are dying for the same reason 90% of our large fish are gone, frogs have 7 hind legs, mussels are jamming our water pipes, forest fires are ravaging our towns, and we are running out of fresh water.
That reason is that we are too fucking stupid to do anything except what gratifies us the most. So fight cancer with your shark cartilage, infest us with foreign species, empty out those ballast tanks, fight those needed forest fires, and take those 20 minute showers, cause we both know you are not gonna change a fucking thing you do to save the planet from yourself.
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you.
I have trees in my neighborhood here in upstate NY that are a mere hundreds of years old. I used to live within bicycling distance of the very pine tree that Ethan Allen chose as the model for the tree on the Vermont flag over 200 years ago. 400 hundred years isn't really considered an unusual age for a tree in the absence of logging.
No, a tree has no life expectency as such and they do not die simply from old age. Something must kill them, be it disease, parasitic infestation or natural disaster.
The California Redwoods are not merely hundreds of years old, that's how long it takes them to merely reach maturity, say 16ish in human terms. they are thousands of years old, many predating the Christian era.
They are also very hardy trees by any terms. The "Chimney Tree" is hollow, its center being burned out in a forest fire. You can stand inside of it and look out its top at the sky.
This tree is not only still alive but gradually healing itself, regrowing material to replace that lost to the fire, and someday may live to appear completely normal again.
The bark of a redwood is up to one foot thick and acts as an insulator during forest fires and many trees can survive major conflagrations with little more than the loss of some "skin."
A fallen redwood is still alive as well and will start putting out roots into the ground, sprouting several new trunks along the length of the old one.
In their natural enviroment the California Redwood is one of the hardiest trees known to exist. If they are dying there is something terribly, terribly wrong.
While the specifics might be a mystery the generalities are plain. What is wrong is that something has changed their enviroment.
I'll give you three guesses at to what that something might be.
KFG
Spanning tree?
Scientist 1: So, all the giant redwoods have died...
Scientist 2: Jawhol, even ze von I vaz keepig for my bar-b-q... terrible, terrible... but vat a lot of excellent vood!
Scientist 1: But, our smart dust worked!
Scientist 2: You hef ze data, zen?
Scientist 1: Five hundred and thiry terrabytes of it!
Scientist 2: That vill take years to process...
Scientist 1: Decades!
Scientist 2: Zank God for ze taxpayer. Zo, ve must be starting a New Project...
Scientist 1: Yes, I've already filled in the Grant Application Form, I just need your co-signature...
Scientist 2: Let me see: "Microsensors for Measuring Domestic Charcoal Consumption". You are meaning ze bar-b-queues?
Scientist 1: We also have a study on the long-term quality of Amazonian beef.
Scientist 2: A match made in heaven!
Scientist 1: And our first shipment of barbeques arrives next week...
Scientist 2: Pity ve didn't get ze beer study as vell.
Scientist 1: Well, I know this guy, see...
Ceci n'est pas une signature
The destruction of the redwoods was being caused by MAXXAM corporation (parading as Pacific Lumber, Co) as they own many thousands of acres of redwoods and are determined to rape them for all they're worth. Funny, I didn't need any fancy gizmos to figure that out, I just had to take a trip to Freshwater, CA and watch the carnage.
Fortunately, data loggers are more benign than the other kind...
Am I the only one that is both annoyed and amused by a 4.5 megabyte tarball for something that's supposed to be a Tiny OS? I'd love to dig in and check it out, but it looks to me like it'd be wading into bloatware. Can any Tiny OS acolytes out there show me the light?
Each tree is growing - or dying - slightly differently from its neighbouring trees due to different local conditions. This means we can study the differences between trees and relate them to differences in local conditions. If we can work out why some trees are doing better than others, then we have a chance of working out how to improve the conditions for the trees that are dying. The micromote project is collecting basic information on local conditions such as temperature and humidity which will enable this research to reach conclusions in the next couple of years.
Scroogle
The redwood trees are tough but that doesn't mean they're immune to any of the factors known to affect tree health. For example, one of the most basic factors affecting tree health is water supply. Any tree will start dying if water availability in its root zone is reduced below a survival threshold value. We know that compared to 50 years or more ago, California has been consuming more and more water, especially groundwater, to the extent that there are water supply arguments. In many places the water table has been dropping even during wetter years. This could be a pointer to the cause of the trees' problems.
Scroogle
There's a part of Death Valley called the Racetrack. Perhaps an exception could be made to the "no equipment in wilderness areas" policy for tiny sensors. For those that don't know, the Racetrack is an ultra-flat part of Death Valley known for a field of rocks that move around and leave tracks when no one is looking. No one knows why, and some of those rocks are pretty damned heavy. It would be great to leave some sort of remote sensors there to find out why they move.
Seriously, '90% of our large fish are gone'? If that's the case, then I have to assume we ate them, otherwise there would be a whole lot of stinking fish laying around. Do you cry when a shark eats a fish, or a killer whale eats a baby seal? 'But wait,' you say, 'those are part of a natural, balanced, eco-system.' What do you suppose we are? Animals? That's right. Did you know that over 90% of all species that have ever existed are extinct, due to 'natural' causes, before humans existed. Must have been those darn proto-human hominid thingies, huh.
And for your information, those mussels clogging our water pipes are there becasue they LIKE IT . Usually they hang out there because the heat makes them reproduce faster. You see, the survival drive is as fundamental to them as it is to us.
Lastly, don't assume that I'm completely against enviromentalism, or conservation. I'm against wacko-enviromentalists who twist data and make up facts to preach what usually boils down to communism or some other crazy scheme. Nobody really wants to destroy the environment. This isn't Captain Planet, where people want to destroy the Earth for the sake of being evil. I'll admit that often, while pursuing other goals, humanity has been irresponsible about pollution, but we all have to live here too. Tycoons don't want to drink dirty water anymore than you do, and most of them probably bathe in the same water that you do.
So, any non foaming-at-the-mouth comments?
> 'But wait,' you say, 'those are part of a natural, balanced, eco-system.' What do you suppose we are? Animals? That's right.
Humans are not part of one natural, balanced eco-system. We are the only species on Earth that can and has become a significant part of every eco-system. We are the only species that has ever changed the face of the earth so drastically in under 200 years. (meteors aren't species)
"Did you know that over 90% of all species that have ever existed are extinct, due to 'natural' causes, before humans existed."
Since humans have only been on earth for less than 1% of its 4.54 Billion years I would expect that that MUST be true. If we killed off every living thing on the planet leaving only people and machines your statement would still have to be true. 4.54 billion years is a long time. So now that we know it must be true, what does that have to do with anything? According to your logic since we're animals then if we blight the soil, pave the forests, pollute the air, and end up living shoulder-to-shoulder on a steady diet of soylent green, that too is then a natural process of animals. Yes it sure is, but certainly it's not the one we're shooting for.
"I'll admit that often, while pursuing other goals, humanity has been irresponsible about pollution, but we all have to live here too."
Capitalism by definition and in practice, is the pursuit of profit. There's your goal. Protecting our environment under a system that discourages it at every turn, (e.g. it cuts into short-term profits to do things in an ecologically conscience and sustainable way,) is extremely difficult. You don't need to be evil to consume a vastly disproportionate amount of resources compared to just about everything that came before you on this earth (Since you like that comparison). You just need to be born into the system. The very best you can do is try to fight it, e.g. bike to work along a busy road, eat vegetarian, turn off lights, etc.
And when we're extinct I'm sure a zenobiologist from Vogon 3 will come down some day and conclude that "due to the insurmountable drive built into the human animals by their own evolutionary process to consume and breed as successfully as possible, they quickly reached the same fate as many such species throughout the galaxy, they outgrew their planet before they could get off of it."
Conquering nature is, by definition, suicide.
P.S. - Yes, we ate them.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
The thing about equilibrium is, if you upset it, it tries to reestablish itself.
In terms of the volcanic/erosion flux, adding more CO2 means a higher atmospheric concentration to keep the rate of removal up.
If you make the environment more favourable for quicker plant growth, you get more plant growth, and therefore more CO2 is eaten up.
And therefore more plant matter to decay and release CO2. Now, it appears that around half of manmade CO2 is currently being stored as extra biomass. Should this process stop or reverse as a result of higher temperatures moving ecosystems to different areas, this stored CO2 will be released.