Science Current Events | Science News | Brightsurf.com
 
Email a Friend Send to a friend
Printer Friendly Print MIT: Preventing forest fires with tree power

MIT: Preventing forest fires with tree power

September 22, 2008

Sensor system runs on electricity generated by trees

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--MIT researchers and colleagues are working to find out whether energy from trees can power a network of sensors to prevent spreading forest fires.




What they learn also could raise the possibility of using trees as silent sentinels along the nation's borders to detect potential threats such as smuggled radioactive materials.

The U.S. Forest Service currently predicts and tracks fires with a variety of tools, including remote automated weather stations. But these stations are expensive and sparsely distributed. Additional sensors could save trees by providing better local climate data to be used in fire prediction models and earlier alerts. However, manually recharging or replacing batteries at often very hard-to-reach locations makes this impractical and costly.

The new sensor system seeks to avoid this problem by tapping into trees as a self-sustaining power supply. Each sensor is equipped with an off-the-shelf battery that can be slowly recharged using electricity generated by the tree. A single tree doesn't generate a lot of power, but over time the "trickle charge" adds up, "just like a dripping faucet can fill a bucket over time," said Shuguang Zhang, one of the researchers on the project and the associate director of MIT's Center for Biomedical Engineering (CBE).

The system produces enough electricity to allow the temperature and humidity sensors to wirelessly transmit signals four times a day, or immediately if there's a fire. Each signal hops from one sensor to another, until it reaches an existing weather station that beams the data by satellite to a forestry command center in Boise, Idaho.

Scientists have long known that trees can produce extremely small amounts of electricity. But no one knew exactly how the energy was produced or how to take advantage of the power.

In a recent issue of the Public Library of Science ONE, Zhang and MIT colleagues report the answer. "It's really a fairly simple phenomenon: An imbalance in pH between a tree and the soil it grows in," said Andreas Mershin, a postdoctoral associate at the CBE.¬ The first author of the paper is Christopher J. Love, an MIT senior in chemistry who has been working on the project since his freshman year.

To solve the puzzle of where the voltage comes from, the team had to test a number of theories - many of them exotic. That meant a slew of experiments that showed, among other things, that the electricity was not due to a simple electrochemical redox reaction (the type that powers the 'potato batteries' common in high school science labs, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemon_battery). The team also ruled out the source as due to coupling to underground power lines, radio waves or other electromagnetic interference.

Testing of the wireless sensor network, which is being developed by Voltree Power (http://voltreepower.com), is slated to begin in the spring on a 10-acre plot of land provided by the Forest Service.

According to Love, who with Mershin has a financial interest in Voltree, the bioenergy harvester battery charger module and sensors are ready. "We expect that we'll need to instrument four trees per acre," he said, noting that the system is designed for easy installation by unskilled workers.

"Right now we're finalizing exactly how the wireless sensor network will be configured to use the minimum amount of power," he concluded.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology



Related Forest Fires Current Events and Forest Fires News Articles Forest Fires Current Events and Forest Fires News RSS Forest Fires Current Events and Forest Fires News RSS
Climate studies to benefit from 12 years of satellite aerosol data
Aerosols, very small particles suspended in the air, play an important role in the global climate balance and in regulating climate change.

Plants' response to fire tested
A team from the National Institute for Agricultural and Food Research and Technology (INIA) has developed a new method for identifying the flammability of plant species by using a device that measures how construction materials react to fire.

World's river deltas sinking due to human activity, says new study led by CU-Boulder
A new study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder indicates most of the world's low-lying river deltas are sinking from human activity, making them increasingly vulnerable to flooding from rivers and ocean storms and putting tens of millions of people at risk.

Electrical circuit runs entirely off power in trees
You've heard about flower power. What about tree power? It turns out that it's there, in small but measurable quantities. There's enough power in trees for University of Washington researchers to run an electronic circuit.

Model predicts evolution of Mediterranean landscape following fires
An international research team has developed a mathematical and cartographical model that make it possible to view how Mediterranean landscapes evolve in the aftermath of forest fires.

Scientists expect wildfires to increase as climate warms in the coming decades
As the climate warms in the coming decades, atmospheric scientists at Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and their colleagues expect that the frequency of wildfires will increase in many regions.

Global warming increasing the dispersal of flora in Northern forests
As a result of stronger winds caused by global warming, seeds and pollen are being carried over longer distances.

Spring agricultural fires have large impact on melting Arctic
Scientists from around the world will convene at the University of New Hampshire June 2-5, 2009, to discuss key findings from the most ambitious effort ever undertaken to measure "short-lived" airborne pollutants in the Arctic and determine how they contribute in the near term to the dramatic changes underway in the vast, climate-sensitive region.

NASA study says climate adds fuel to Asian wildfire emissions
In the last decade, Asian farmers have cleared tens of thousands of square miles of forests to accommodate the world's growing demand for palm oil, an increasingly popular food ingredient.

Potentially harmful chemicals found in forest fire smoke
Researchers have detected common plant toxins that affect human health and ecosystems in smoke from forest fires. The results from the new study also suggest that smoldering fires may produce more toxins than wildfires - a reason to keep human exposures to a minimum during controlled burns.
More Forest Fires Current Events and Forest Fires News Articles
The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America

The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America
by Timothy Egan (Author)

On the afternoon of August 20, 1910, a battering ram of wind moved through the drought-stricken national forests of Washington, Idaho, and Montana, whipping the hundreds of small blazes burning across the forest floor into a roaring inferno that jumped from treetop to ridge as it raged, destroying towns and timber in the blink of an eye. Forest rangers had assembled nearly ten thousand men  —  college boys, day workers, immigrants from mining camps  —  to fight the fire. But no living person had seen anything like those flames, and neither the rangers nor anyone else knew how to subdue them.

Egan narrates the struggles of the overmatched rangers against the implacable fire with unstoppable dramatic force. Equally dramatic is the larger story he tells of outsized...

Survival

Survival
Forest Fire (Primary Contributor)



Jumping Fire: A Smokejumper's Memoir of Fighting Wildfire

Jumping Fire: A Smokejumper's Memoir of Fighting Wildfire
by Murry A. Taylor (Author)

Fighting fires since 1965, veteran smokejumper Murry Taylor finally retired from his legendary career after last summer-the worst fire season in more than fifty years. After three decades of parachuting out of planes and battling blazes in the vast, rugged wilderness of Alaska and the West, Taylor recounts in Jumping Fire, with passion and honesty, stories of man versus nature at its most furious and unforgiving. He shares what it's like to hear the deafening roar, to smell the acrid burn, to feel the intense heat, to breathe the thick fumes, and to finally run for your life with exploding flames two hundred feet high and a mile wide licking at your heels. Written with a keen eye for detail and a talent for storytelling, "Jumping Fire is a tale of love and loss, life and death, and sheer...

  Obey The Forest Fire Buttondown Shirt,Buttondown Shirts for Men, Large,Burgundy
by Obey

Obey The Forest Fire Buttondown Shirt,Buttondown Shirts for Men: Model is wearing a size MEDIUM The Forest Fire Buttondown Shirt is made from 100% cotton and features a plaid pattern knit throughout and two buttoned chest pockets. By Obey

NOVA: Fire Wars

NOVA: Fire Wars
Starring: Stacy Keach
Directed By: Kirk Wolfinger

Every year, thousands of men and women wage America's war on fire in our majestic wildlands. Armed with special training and the best technology, and with their hearts full of determination, they battle the blazes. But in spite of all their efforts, we are not winning the fire wars. In the year 2000 alone, wildfires ignited over six million acres across the United States, destroying homes, scorching lives—and burning through over $1 billion in firefighting costs. And years of fire suppression have left a dangerous legacy: forest conditions that lead to more catastrophic fires than ever before.

Now, the firefighting community is asking new questions: can we win, if we only fight fire as a war? Should we fight all fires? Ecologists point to another side of fire—as one of the key...

Forest Fires: Behavior and Ecological Effects

Forest Fires: Behavior and Ecological Effects
by Edward A. Johnson (Editor), Kiyoko Miyanishi (Editor)

Even before the myth of Prometheus, fire played a crucial ecological role around the world. Numerous plant communities depend on fire to generate species diversity in both time and space. Without fire such ecosystems would become sterile monocultures. Recent efforts to prohibit fire in fire dependent communities have contributed to more intense and more damaging fires. For these reasons, foresters, ecologists, land managers, geographers, and environmental scientists are interested in the behavior and ecological effects of fires. This book will be the first to focus on the chemistry and physics of fire as it relates to the ways in which fire behaves and the impacts it has on ecosystem function. Leading international contributors have been recruited by the editors to prepare a didactic...

Survival

Survival
by Forest Fire

2009 debut album from Brooklyn's finest lo-fi Alternative Rock/Folk act. Presented in four-page digipak packaging, this critically acclaimed album is making a large amount of noise on the blogs and online music sites, being often described as this year's answer to Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver. Nine tracks. Broken Sound.

Tonka - Forest Fire Ranger, Red

Tonka - Forest Fire Ranger, Red
by Tonka

Take to the skies with this great fleet of aircraft. Everything you need to go airborneplanes, jets and even helicopters. Big and sturdy diecast with moving parts.

Sunshine City

Sunshine City
Forest Fire (Primary Contributor)



Forest Fires, Car Exhaust, Space Station

Forest Fires, Car Exhaust, Space Station
Also With: Discovery Channel (Producer)



© 2009 BrightSurf.com