Exciting innovations in environmental conservation-related technology comes to rescue for some of the deforesting, equivalent of 27 soccer pitches every minute, going on in the world.Forests are essential to global biodiversity. They provide food and habitats for wildlife and indigenous populations and help reduce the impact of climate change. But across the world, forests are at risk of decimation by combining human-driven and natural threats.Innovative wireless conservation technologies are emerging to combat this concerning trend and encourage greater action against deforestation.<h2>The threat to the world's forests</h2>Increasing global demands for food, materials, and energy cause widespread deforestation and forest degradation. As the number of trees on our planet dwindles, potentially irreversible harm is done to terrestrial biodiversity. How precarious is this reality? In a landmark report, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) published these figures: Approximately 2.9 million km2 of native forest cover was lost from 1990 to 2015 due to clearing and wood harvesting. Intact forests suffered a seven percent reduction from 2000 to 2013 in developed and developing countries.Today, things are not getting any better; the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) claims, on average, the world loses 75,700 km2 of forests annually — that's the equivalent of 27 soccer pitches every minute.Protected land zones represent a vital weapon in the global fight against deforestation. However, successfully enforcing borders, regulations, and restrictions is much easier said than done. Local authorities and conservationists everywhere need more support to identify and restrict human-driven threats to forests. Typically, illegal logging activity and natural events such as wildfires might otherwise go unchecked. Ultimately, meaningful change relies on closely monitoring the activities occurring within a tropical rainforest's designated protected areas.<h2>Wireless to the rescue</h2>Protected status alone cannot save forests across the globe. Thankfully, exciting innovations in environmental conservation-related technology have joined the battle. Utilizing short- and long-range wireless networks, sensor-based devices, like remote monitoring systems connected to Cloud platforms and smartphone apps, are at authorities' hands. Thus, they can constantly listen to all the sounds made in a forest, even if they're kilometers or continents away.<a href="https://www.codeofconscience.org/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Code of Conscience</a> is a leading initiative supporting efforts to limit illegal deforestation. Launched in September 2019, the initiative aims to track the type of heavy-duty vehicles often used to rip through the forest in both legal and banned logging operations.Code of Conscience's solution autonomously restricts crews from entering protected zones (as determined by the UN World Database on Protected Areas). The open-source software uses publicly available mapping data with existing GPS tracking technology installed in construction vehicles. The GPS-based "geofence" capabilities interlock with the forest-clearing machinery's fuel pumps, enabling automatic shutdown if the equipment moves into a restricted area.Integrated cellular connectivity enables notifications and audits of the machinery's position during regular operation and provides a method for over-the-air map data updates. A small, low-cost chip has also been developed to equip older, non-GPS vehicle models with the same capability.<h2>Listening out for deforestation</h2>Code of Conscience has been piloted in the Amazon. Using Nordic Semiconductor's&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nordicsemi.com/Software-and-tools/Prototyping-platforms/Nordic-Thingy-91?utm_campaign=2021%20wevolver" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Nordic Thingy:91</a> multi-sensor cellular IoT prototyping platform, they demonstrate forestry and agricultural vehicles tracking on land and water. The Nordic Thingy:91 offers cellular connectivity 'out-of-the-box.' OEM partners can easily integrate the technology into their machinery for future applications and remote installations.Another solution can highlight the dangers of deforestation to local communities by detecting loud sounds in forests. The unique device was developed by the young winner of the not-for-profit&nbsp;<a href="https://microbit.org/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Micro:bit Educational Foundation</a>'s "do your:bit" BBC micro:bit challenge (North America), inspired by the UN Global Goals initiative.The system includes a Raspberry Pi computer with a connected camera and a microphone that communicates with the Micro:bit (a Nordic SoC-based pocket computer). It wirelessly relays an audio signal then automatically takes a photo and posts it to a public Twitter account. A local park ranger can then review the picture to determine the noise source and respond accordingly — whether it's the crack of lighting or something more sinister, for example, the buzz of a chainsaw.<h2>Light at the end of the canopy</h2>Could solutions providing remote access to actionable information and real-time alerts help individuals, organizations, and communities in their quest to save the forests and, in turn, the planet? With support from robust wireless networks, and if the world is willing to get on board, there certainly appears to be light at the end of the canopy.&nbsp;<hr>This article was first published on Nordic's&nbsp;<a href="https://blog.nordicsemi.com/getconnected" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a><a href="https://blog.nordicsemi.com/getconnected?utm_campaign=2021%20wevolver" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Get Connected Blog</a>.

Exciting innovations in environmental conservation related technology comes to rescue for some of the deforesting, equivalent of 27 soccer pitches every minute, going on in the world.

Saving the forests with wireless tech

New results from NASA's Juno mission at <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/jupiter" target="_blank">Jupiter</a> suggest our solar system's largest planet is home to what's called "shallow lightning." An unexpected form of electrical discharge, shallow lightning originates from clouds containing an ammonia-water solution, whereas lightning on Earth originates from water clouds.Other new findings suggest the violent thunderstorms for which the gas giant is known may form slushy ammonia-rich hailstones Juno's science team calls "mushballs"; they theorize that mushballs essentially kidnap ammonia and water in the upper atmosphere and carry them into the depths of Jupiter's atmosphere.The shallow-lightning findings will be published Thursday, Aug. 6, in the journal Nature, while the mushballs research is currently available online in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.Since NASA's Voyager mission first saw Jovian lightning flashes in 1979, it has been thought that the planet's lightning is similar to Earth's, occurring only in thunderstorms where water exists in all its phases - ice, liquid, and gas. At Jupiter this would place the storms around 28 to 40 miles (45 to 65 kilometers) below the visible clouds, with temperatures that hover around 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Celsius, the temperature at which water freezes). Voyager, and all other missions to the gas giant prior to Juno, saw lightning as bright spots on Jupiter's cloud tops, suggesting that the flashes originated in deep water clouds. But lightning flashes observed on Jupiter's dark side by Juno's Stellar Reference Unit tell a different story."Juno's close flybys of the cloud tops allowed us to see something surprising - smaller, shallower flashes - originating at much higher altitudes in Jupiter's atmosphere than previously assumed possible," said Heidi Becker, Juno's Radiation Monitoring Investigation lead at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and the lead author of the Nature paper.Becker and her team suggest that Jupiter's powerful thunderstorms fling water-ice crystals high up into the planet's atmosphere, over 16 miles (25 kilometers) above Jupiter's water clouds, where they encounter atmospheric ammonia vapor that melts the ice, forming a new ammonia-water solution. At such lofty altitude, temperatures are below minus 126 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 88 degrees Celsius) - too cold for pure liquid water to exist.<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tq_6DClZ0Ns?&amp;wmode=opaque" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" class="fr-draggable" style="width: 788px; height: 445px;"></iframe>This animation takes the viewer on a simulated journey into Jupiter's exotic high-altitude electrical storms. Get an up-close view of Mission Juno's newly discovered "shallow lighting" flashes and dive into the violent atmospheric jet of the Nautilus cloud. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill&nbsp;"At these altitudes, the ammonia acts like an antifreeze, lowering the melting point of water ice and allowing the formation of a cloud with ammonia-water liquid," said Becker. "In this new state, falling droplets of ammonia-water liquid can collide with the upgoing water-ice crystals and electrify the clouds. This was a big surprise, as ammonia-water clouds do not exist on Earth."The shallow lightning factors into another puzzle about the inner workings of Jupiter's atmosphere: Juno's Microwave Radiometer instrument discovered that ammonia was depleted - which is to say, missing - from most of Jupiter's atmosphere. Even more puzzling was that the amount of ammonia changes as one moves within Jupiter's atmosphere."Previously, scientists realized there were small pockets of missing ammonia, but no one realized how deep these pockets went or that they covered most of Jupiter,"said Scott Bolton, Juno's principal investigator at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. "We were struggling to explain the ammonia depletion with ammonia-water rain alone, but the rain couldn't go deep enough to match the observations. I realized a solid, like a hailstone, might go deeper and take up more ammonia. When Heidi discovered shallow lightning, we realized we had evidence that ammonia mixes with water high in the atmosphere, and thus the lightning was a key piece of the puzzle."<img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1597129735080-PIA24042-640.jpg">This graphic depicts the evolutionary process of "shallow lightning" and "mushballs" on Jupiter. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/CNRS&nbsp;<h2>Jovian Mushballs</h2>A second paper, released yesterday in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets,envisions the strange brew of 2/3 water and 1/3 ammonia gas that becomes the seed for Jovian hailstones, known as mushballs. Consisting of layers of water-ammonia slush and ice covered by a thicker water-ice crust, mushballs are generated in a similar manner as hail is on Earth - by growing larger as they move up and down through the atmosphere."Eventually, the mushballs get so big, even the updrafts can't hold them, and they fall deeper into the atmosphere, encountering even warmer temperatures, where they eventually evaporate completely," said Tristan Guillot, a Juno co-investigator from the Université Côte d'Azur in Nice, France, and lead author of the second paper. "Their action drags ammonia and water down to deep levels in the planet's atmosphere. That explains why we don't see much of it in these places with Juno's Microwave Radiometer.""Combining these two results was critical to solving the mystery of Jupiter's missing ammonia," said Bolton. "As it turned out, the ammonia isn't actually missing; it is just transported down while in disguise, having cloaked itself by mixing with water. The solution is very simple and elegant with this theory: When the water and ammonia are in a liquid state, they are invisible to us until they reach a depth where they evaporate - and that is quite deep."Understanding the meteorology of Jupiter enables us to develop theories of atmospheric dynamics for all the planets in our solar system as well as for the exoplanets being discovered outside our solar system. Comparing how violent storms and atmospheric physics work across the solar system allows planetary scientists to test theories under different conditions.<h2>More About the Mission</h2>The solar-powered Jupiter explorer launched&nbsp;<a href="https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=3095" target="_blank">nine years ago today, on Aug. 5, 2011</a>. And last month marked the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6558" target="_blank">fourth anniversary of its arrival at Jupiter</a>. Since entering the gas giant's orbit, Juno has performed 27 science flybys and logged over 300 million miles (483 million kilometers).JPL, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Juno mission for the principal investigator, Scott Bolton, of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. Juno is part of NASA's New Frontiers Program, which is managed at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built and operates the spacecraft.

This illustration uses data obtained by NASA's Juno mission to depict high-altitude electrical storms on Jupiter. Juno's sensitive Stellar Reference Unit camera detected unusual lightning flashes on Jupiter's dark side during the spacecraft's close flybys of the planet. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstädt

environmental monitoring

Latest Posts

Saving the forests with wireless tech

'Shallow Lightning' and 'Mushballs' Reveal Ammonia to NASA's Juno Scientists