For each unit change in pH, the electrical current changed by 59 millivolts. The greater the difference between the soil pH and the tree's pH, the greater the energy, as Mershin and Love predicted. Still, it's not much of a current. The batteries that likely power your TV remote are about 1.5 volts. A tree living in harsh soil conditions can generate a few hundred millivolts at best. But through some proprietary hardware and software tricks, Love and his colleagues amplified that tiny tree current up to 2.4 volts, enough energy to power small sensors. But initially, they didn't know what kind of sensors they should power. "We had a solution that was looking for a problem," said Mershin. After considering several possibilities, the team, now incorporated as Voltree, created a cheap, tree-powered sensor that would monitor temperature and humidity inside a forest and approached Tory Henderson of the U.S. Forest Service at the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) in Boise, Idaho. Each sensor package should last approximately 15 years, said Love, and would be placed in a grid with sensors spaced about 65 feet apart. Depending on the programming, data would bounce from one sensor to another until it reached a more permanent weather station, which would send the data to NIFC. Related Links: |
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