IoT in sustainble agriculture
IoT in Sustainable Agriculture
Animals in the wild are always in search of food. Herbivores, carnivores, omnivores; everyone is in need of energy that comes from food. We humans are omnivores, as we can eat and digest meats and plants. Before, this helped us find food in many different conditions and different ecosystems. We’ve been eating beef since prehistoric times, as evidenced by the earliest cave paintings depiction of the hunt for the aurochs (an extinct animal). When the cattle was domesticated, beef consumption took off.[1]
Although beef is a great food, humans didn’t stop with domestication of cattles, humans also started to domesticate plants. There was no single factor that led people to do farming in different parts of the world. In the Near East, it’s thought that climatic changes at the end of the last ice age brought seasonal conditions that favored plants like wild cereals. In other places increased pressure on natural food resources may have forced people to find homegrown solutions. But whatever the reasons for its independent origins, farming was one of the keystones for reaching the modern age.[2]
Image from Wikipedia, “Ancient Egyptian Agriculture”
Agriculture is the art and science of cultivating the soil, growing crops and raising livestock.[3] Agriculture is a broad term for growing plants or fungi, raising cattles or chickens and the list goes on. Food classes include cereals (grains), vegetables, fruits, oils, meat, milk, eggs and fungi.[4] Agricultural products aren’t only for eating purposes, there’s also plants that are used in medicines or in beauty products, like lavender. The fungi that are used in detergent making is an example too.
Over one-third of the world’s workers are employed in agriculture, second to the service sector.[4] It’s such a huge sector mainly because food is a must for humans’ survival.
Agriculture as a industry is still growing because there are many more humans that are being born every year. The birth rate in the world is increasing exponentially. But before it was a huge industry with mechanization, agrochemicals and all that, it was a agricultural development was very slow.[2] One of the earliest agricultural tool was fire. Native Americans used fire to control the growth of berry-producing plants, which they knew grew quickly after a wildfire. And before bone, stone, bronze tools were developed there was farmers who used just their hands and sticks. And as the tools developed has made the process of agriculture faster, humans had more food than they needed. People began stocking foods in jars, and clay pots. And this is how the agriculture industry started, when farmers had more produce than they needed, they started trading or selling it.
As we come closer to modern times, farming became a huge industry with mechanization. And the nature of industries are always in need of faster, better, more efficient technologies because they want to make more money through selling more produce.
Mechanization, plant breeding, agrochemicals, agronomy, fertilizers and technological developments have increased crop yields. Selective breeding and more medicines for animals have increased the output of meat. Like every industry, technology has helped with efficiency, quality and quantity. Technology in the agriculture industry is developed with the help of agricultural workers, agricultural scientists and agricultural engineers.
Agricultural scientists typically do the following: [5]
● Agricultural and food scientists typically do the following:
● Conduct research and experiments to improve the productivity and sustainability of field crops and farm animals
● Create new food products and develop new and better ways to process, package, and deliver them
● Study the composition of soil as it relates to plant growth, and research ways to improve it
● Communicate research findings to the scientific community, food producers, and the public
● Travel between facilities to oversee the implementation of new projects Agricultural engineers typically do the following:[5]
● Use computer software to design equipment, systems, or structures
● Modify environmental factors that affect animal or crop production, such as airflow in a barn or runoff patterns on a field
● Test equipment to ensure its safety and reliability
● Oversee construction and production operations
● Plan and work together with clients, contractors, consultants, and other engineers to ensure effective and desirable outcomes
The scientists and engineers do better research when they work together. This is true in general, science and technology has always been in collaboration throughout history. The goal of the research in agriculture is generally to increase efficiency. Efficiency is a reoccuring theme in agricultural research because overpopulation is our reality, also because the agriculture industry wants to make more money by making more produce.
Efficiency research in agriculture is generally not done by small farmers. Industrial agriculture is funding these researchers so that they can have maximum efficient systems on their huge farms. There are a lot of different ways to increase efficiency in agriculture. Of course the first thing that was done in history to increase efficiency was using natural fertilizers. But if we talk about modern times, beginning in the 1970s scientists found that they could rearrange genes[3] and add new ones to promote disease resistance, productivity, and other desired characteristics in crops and livestock. The main goal is to increase efficiency.
These genetically modified organisms (GMOs or GM foods) are now common throughout the developed world. Biotechnology allows scientists to alter the DNA of microbes, plants, and animals.
To obtain high yields, research should be done to improve the use of agricultural land. The amount of agricultural production depends on how rationally it is used. As the society develops, the importance of land increases, which increases the need for careful monitoring and analysis of land transformation and use. To improve effective land use, it is necessary to work with scientists and engineers.
There is gene technology, good land use, but of course the increase in better machine technology is a huge part of why the agriculture industry became so much more efficient than before.
There are a lot of different equipments being used in organic and nonorganic farming. Agricultural machinery is a crucial part of how the world is fed. There are tractors, combines, planters and sprayers used in modern agriculture. To understand how efficiency is important in agriculture, we need to understand the tools used in modern times.
Image from Wikipedia, “Agricultural machinery”
Tractors do the majority of work on a modern farm. They are used to push/pull implementsmachines that till the ground, plant seed, and perform other tasks. Tillage implements prepare the soil for planting by loosening the soil and killing weeds or dangerous plants.[7]
Combine is a machine designed to efficiently harvest a variety of grain crops.
The most common type of seeder is called a planter, and spaces seeds out equally in long rows, which are usually two to three feet apart. Some crops are planted by drills, which put out much more seed in rows less than a foot apart, blanketing the field with crops.
After planting, other agricultural machinery such as self-propelled sprayers can be used to apply fertilizer and pesticides. Agriculture sprayer application is a method to protect crops from weeds by using herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides.
There are new ways of increasing efficiency other than machinery, fertilizers, gene technology. In the 21st century, as the tech industry grew, high-tech cameras and sensors became more and more common. Nowadays almost all of us have access to very good cameras and sensors in our pockets because of our smartphones.
Developments in technology industry has affected scientific research in a great way. Agricultural research is also making use of modern technology. Especially “Internet of Things” being used for increasing efficiency in agriculture.
IoT is things sharing information with other things via the internet. This information is gathered with sensors and the types of information “things” provide varies. IoT processes huge amounts of information that can’t be possibly processed by a human. It can also predict complicated patterns of connections between information. Because of this, it can handle the chaotic nature of life.
IoT gathers and uses sound, movement, light, heartbeat, heat, location data through many different sensor types. GPS trackers, cameras, heartbeat monitors, thermal imaging cameras
are commonly used. Usage of different sensors varies from environment to environment and type of studies done with IoT. For example wildlife research uses heartbeat monitors, it’s very common. But humidity sensors would be used more commonly in agriculture research.
“The technologies associated with the Internet of Things have great potential for application in the domain of food and agriculture, especially in view of the societal and environmental challenges faced by this sector. From farm to fork, IoT technologies could transform the sector, contributing to food safety, and the reduction of agricultural inputs and food waste.”[11]
Image from “IoT Solutions World Congress, IoT transforming the future of agriculture”
Technologies and IoT have the potential to transform agriculture in many aspects. Namely, there are 5 ways IoT can improve agriculture:
- Data, tons of data, collected by smart agriculture sensors, e.g. weather conditions, soil quality, crop’s growth progress or cattle’s This data can be used to track the state of your business in general as well as staff performance, equipment efficiency.
- Better control over the internal processes and, as a result, lower production The ability to foresee the output of your production allows you to plan for better product distribution. If you know exactly how much crops you are going to harvest, you can make sure your product won’t lie around unsold.
- Cost management and waste reduction thanks to the increased control over the Being able to see any anomalies in the crop growth or livestock health, you will be able to lower the risks of losing your yield.
- Increased business efficiency through process By using smart devices, you can automate multiple processes across your production cycle, e.g. irrigation, fertilizing, or pest control.
- Enhanced product quality and volumes. Achieve better control over the production process and maintain higher standards of crop quality and growth capacity through
Arable is moving agriculture tech forward today with a new generation of internet of things (IoT) tools that enable farmers to take advantage of advanced sensors, wireless networks, and machine learning recommendations to improve crop growth.[10]
Arable is manufacturing a sensor called “The Mark 2”. The Mark 2 is a solar-powered weather station, crop monitor, and watering management tool. It is better than the last sensor they’ve manufactured, it has improved sensor accuracy, expanded cellular connectivity, extended battery life, and a protective UV coating to withstand extreme temperatures and harsh environments. The device installs in minutes, deploys with the push of a button, and requires no maintenance.
Image from “Arable.com”
One of the most common uses of AI and machine learning in agriculture today is determining the right mix of pesticides. This technology also includes determining where the pesticides are applied to by analyzing the unhealthy areas of the field. It can even determine unhealthy parts of the plants.
In agriculture it is one of the most important things to monitor weather conditions continuously so that future activities can be planned accordingly. Weather stations are the most popular gadgets in the field of agriculture which are used to monitor different climate conditions. Weather parameters which are being monitored include temperature, humidity, wind direction, and air pressure etc. Located across the field, weather stations collect the environmental data and send it to the cloud server. Collected data is used for weather analysis to map climate conditions, and provide new insights to take required actions to improve agricultural productivity. [12]
A study which focused on an IoT based weather station had these goals in mind; “The system is aimed at designing a wireless weather monitoring system with embedded sensors which enables it to analyze and keep a check on the weather parameters in an agriculture zone. It will provide proper framed reports based on the analyzed parameters with to the point conclusions to the farmers. It will contain all necessary information that will help the farmers to make proper decisions regarding crop selection, agriculture mechanisms etc. This will help to reduce the impact of hazards that may be caused due to weather on a farmer’s life.”[13]
Another study which is focusing on detecting fires, is using drones to do it. Drones with IoT and AI systems can detect fire more quickly than the human eye. They can warn the user about agricultural fire thanks to 5G technology and help firefighters stop it. Some of them throw water too. The drones can also alert farmers about problems in a crop area, or determine the growth rate in a certain area.[8]
Image from AG WEB, “Fire in the Corn: Farmer’s Best Crop of Lifetime Burns Day Before Harvest”
Another study was focusing on smart greenhouses. To make greenhouses smart, IoT has enabled automatically adjusting the climate conditions according to the weather. Adoption of IoT in Greenhouses has minimized human intervention, thus making the entire process cost-effective and increasing accuracy at the same time. For example, using solar-powered IoT sensors builds modern and inexpensive greenhouses. These sensors collect and transmit the real-time data which helps in monitoring the greenhouse state very precisely in real-time. With the help of the sensors, the state of the humidity levels and state of the overall greenhouse can be monitored via emails or SMS alerts. Automatic and smart irrigation is carried out with the help of IoT. These sensors help to provide information on the pressure, humidity, temperature and light levels. [9}
Of course studies don’t only focus on the food production part of agriculture. There are scientists and engineers working on livestock management and goals of increasing efficiency in that field too.
There’s a study focusing on dairy milk production, saying that it has a very high demand and because of that the milk industry needs a new technology to increase production; “Smart dairy farming (SDF) is the key concept that can satisfy the increasing demand of quality dairy products. SDF can reduce environmental issues, decrease the use of resources, and raise animal health by using advanced sensing, data analyzing and IoT technologies. Since 2015, milk has been the most demanding product and it has become the product with heavy price fluctuation. In order to compete in the worldwide market, the European dairy market needs to improve its production by using the Internet of things.”[14]
Dairy farmers are in the era of precision farming which is considered to be more important for information provision and for capturing competitive market, hence the need for a variety of data sources that contain the dynamic and static cow data about feeding, calving, nutrition, insemination, and the process of milk production.
Internet of things started influencing the milk production. This step should necessarily be taken to meet the demand for dairy for huge population of the world. These are almost the last decades when the milk demands are fulfilled without the help of the latest technology; after that it will not be possible to encounter the demands for dairy and dairy products without technology. Efficiency will be needed very soon in the dairy industry.
Innovation can be in different procedures like the feed system that can sense the food needs of the cow and automatically feed the cow and automatic heat detection that will assist in reproduction. Assessing health and monitoring cows with IoT for disease detection and prevention will help the farmer to locate any animal that needs medical attention.
The smart dairy farming includes real time sensors that collect data from cows with the help of wearable smart collars, machine learning, Interet of Things (IoT), and cloud-based data centers that manage data and support the farmer in order to manage quality of dairy products.
The researchers and industries are aiming to improve the health of dairy animals for cultivating milk yield. In this exploration, different latest technologies have also been included for improving the reproduction of cows. In the research, the authors described different key areas for fertility management with the help of sensor devices. The authors also state that there is still a need to consider the genetic selection for breeding procedure and reproduction management.
Common stressors faced by dairy cattle include overstocking, young and mature cows being put together too closely, and limited feeding space. The negative impacts of this stress include worse immunity, and lower milk production.[15] Stress creates a big impact on efficient agricultural production in the dairy industry.
Geofencing is an IoT based technique in which an application or other programming techniques can utilize GPS, Wi-Fi, or cellular information (5G) to trigger a reaction when a cell phone or a chipped label enters or leaves virtual limit setup around a specified area, known as a geofence.
In dairy farming, a farmer equips a herd of cattles with a hardware device which consists of different sensors and GPS tracking units. Sensors are used to track down animal health and other key behavior to increase output and overall animal wellness. And IoT comes in when sensors give a lot of data and researchers use that data and find patterns. Geofencing uses GPS networks and other related means like Wi-Fi nodes and Bluetooth beacons to create a geofence around the farmer area; then the geofence is paired with an animal collar and software application, and when the animal leaves that specific area, it triggers the alerts for the farmer.
In dairy farming animals can get various diseases due to numerous reasons. When there are a lot of animals, checking every animal daily is impossible and time consuming. It is a lengthy process and a difficult task to do individually and manually, and the animal’s disease is also contagious, so if not caught in time, the other animals can also be infected, causing loss. Yield of milk can also be monitored and controlled, and any minute change in animal behavior can also be recorded. Therefore, to cater for this situation and find an automotive way of monitoring animals’ health, we move towards automatic disease detection.
Any abnormality in this pattern is easily detected with the help of sensors, and the farmer will be alerted through messages or other means. For example, the farmer can analyze any disease with the help of accelerometers measuring animal movement, and activities can be captured, for example, whether the animal is less active compared to its daily routine.
Manual milking in a dairy farm is a very time consuming and slow procedure. The preserving process of milk is also not hygienic. Manual processes can cause bacterial infection in milk. IoT has solved this problem more efficiently, reducing cost and manpower, by introducing automilking. If the temperature is not favorable, the chances of milk getting spoiled are very high, but automilking can automatically preserve the milk by using different smart cooling tanks.[14]
Image from Wikipedia, “Automilking”
Challenges for IoT based research done on efficiency in agriculture exist but they are not impossible to overcome. For example, the equipments which are on the field are directly exposed to harsh environmental factors such as, rain, high temperatures, extreme humidity, hard winds, insects and many other possible dangers which destroy electronic circuits.[12] The destruction of electronic circuits can result in connection issues, power issues, sensor issues. Protection of the circuits is sometimes enough, but of course alternative solutions like back-up sensors.
As long as humans will eat food, will need medicine, will work on developing technology, agriculture industry will exist and it will continue to grow with exponantial growth of human population. And it seems like IoT is and will be a huge part of its technological advancements.
References
- Beef: A Brief History, Dartagnan
- The Development of Agriculture, National Geographic
- The Art and Science of Agriculture, National Geographic
- Agriculture, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture
- US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook
- Efficiency of land use for agriculture, KUSTYSHEVA, Irina Nikolaevna; GAYEVAYA, Elena Viktorovna; PETUKHOVA, Vera Sergeevn; a BULDAKOVA, Oksana Alekseevna
- Agricultural machinery, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_machinery
- IoT Solutions World Congress, “Drones To Control Farming”
- BizIntellia,”5 Applications of IoT in Agriculture – Making Agriculture Smarter”
- Venture Beat, “Arable launches a new generation of IoT tools for data-driven farming”
- IoT in Agriculture:Designing a Europe-Wide Large-Scale Pilot, Christopher Brewster, Ioanna Roussaki, Nikos Kalatzis, Kevin Doolin, Keith Elli
- A Survey on the Role of IoT in Agriculture for the Implementation of Smart Farming, MUHAMMAD SHOAIB FAROOQ, SHAMYLA RIAZ ,ADNAN ABID, KAMRAN ABID ,MUHAMMAD AZHAR NAEEM
- IOT Based Weather Monitoring for Agriculture, Nilesh Patil, Yash Sawant, Tanveet Kaur , Siddhi Kate, Chintan Wagh
- IoT for Development of Smart Dairy Farming, Muhammad Osama Akbar,1 Muhammad Saad Shahbaz khan, Muhammad Jamshaid Ali, Azfar Hussain, Ghazia Qaiser, Maruf Pasha , Urooj Pasha, Malik Saad Missen, and Nadeem Akhtar, https://doi.org/10.1155/2020/4242805
- Phoenix Feeds & Nutrition, Stress and The Dairy Cow
Protection of Wildlife Using IoT
Earth has different things that are alive (plants, animals), things that aren’t alive (lakes, rocks), these are called biotic and abiotic factors. And what we call the place that consists of these factors is an ecosystem. There are different types of ecosystems (deserts, rainforests etc.). All the different ecosystems offer different types of animal, plant and insect species. There are of course variety in ecosystem sizes too.
Researchers have always studied the way we interact with ecosystems. We as humans still interact heavily with the worlds’ ecosystems in our day to day life, even though we are in an urban environment, life is thriving with urban tree planting, between the paving stones, in a humid basement, even in your fridge. Living things are everywhere and we have interacted with Earths’ ecosystems all this time. This is why studying and understanding the ecosystems we live in, teaching them, protecting them from false information is important.
Ecosystems can be studied through a variety of approaches—theoretical studies, studies that use the help of a camera or volunteers to monitor a specific ecosystem to gather data, those that look at differences between ecosystems to understand how they work and direct manipulative experimentation. All of these can need the help of technology. Especially emerging technology, as these fields need new and better ways of research.
Technology and science has always helped each other, and they both helped us in our day to day life and also helped us understand ecosystems, then Earth, then the multiplanetary system, then the universe. Both of them are very precious and great tools for humanity.
There is a lot of ways technology is being used in science. There are centrifuge machines, telescopes and microscopes, computers, cameras, sensors; the list is very long. Mainly the use of computers has helped researchers immensely. The way computers are used in research has been very creative, and as the computing technology got better, computers helped researchers even more. Nowadays it’s almost impossible to make research that contain big datasets without computers, as the datasets are bigger because the information that can be gathered in the name of research has increased with better technology.
Internet of Things (IoT) is becoming more and more popular in wildlife research. There is a heavy use of cameras with sensors when it comes to watching and analyzing animal behavior in wildlife. Nowadays IoT is used to protect these animals. There is a long list of dangers for wildlife. Poachers, farming, deforestation are the main issues the researchers focus on.
Wildlife is a vital and a major part of the ecosystem of Earth. As humans, our survival depends on protection of the wildlife. Biodiversity provides food (pollination of plants), provides oxygen, and it has a major part in a lot of systems of earth. If we don’t start protecting it now, the end of life on earth comes closer every single day. Climate change and pollution of the air is measurably getting worse. There are a lot of different ways to protect wildlife -therefore protecting life- and IoT is one of the many techniques scientists use.
IoT is things sharing information with other things via the internet. This information is gathered with sensors and the types of information “things” provide varies. IoT processes huge amounts of information that can’t be possibly processed by a human. It can also predict complicated patterns of connections between information. Because of this, it can handle the chaotic nature of wildlife (for example rainforests). Of course there are a lot of issues that needs to be solved for IoT to be integrated into wildlife but there has been successful attempts at using them in such a complex and chaotic environment.
IoT gathers and uses sound, movement, light, heartbeat, heat, location data through many different sensor types. GPS trackers, cameras, heartbeat monitors, thermal imaging cameras are commonly used. Usage of different sensors varies from environment to environment and type of studies done with IoT. For example, if the study is about the protection of wildlife from illegal hunting, there are cameras with movement sensors to record poachers.
These useful sensors consist of a lot of electronics. And these electronics can break and malfunction as they’re put in complex environments that consist of a lot of animals that vary in size. This has been addressed in Internet of Things for Efficient Wildlife Conservation: Challenges and Opportunities, GCRF Facilitation Grant Report, “Sabah Malaysia is a high humidity region where electronic components could get damaged quite quickly due to environmental factors such as moisture. Further, in jungle terrains, insects could also get attracted to copper within electronic components.”. Later in the report, it also mentions how the cameras could be affected; “The lighting conditions, raining, dust, insects and many other factors could affect the camera.”.
It also mentions problems that arise with the data communication techniques such as 3G etc.
; “Satellite communication is costly. On the other hand, 3G communication is only available in certain spots within the sanctuary. Therefore, the most practical solution seems to be SMS.”. This tells that there is a lot of problems IoT sensors face in the complex environment of a rainforest. The researchers themselves also face many problems as they are the ones setting up the sensors.
This report is focused on detection of poachers and tagging of animals. Main goal is to protect wildlife and biodiversity. They used artificial intelligence to trap the specific animal they need to catch and tag. Another problem they’ve faced was the detection of animals when catching them; “These traps are not perfect and mostly have weight-based or bait base
activation triggers. Therefore random animals could also get trapped in these traps (due to similar weight or attracted to similar baits)”
This problem led them to use AI technology, which is a great tool when integrated with IoT; “…trap door activation could be detected by using different types of sensors such as vibration, noise, light, motion, and camera and so on”, “…we could use low-cost edge computing technologies to detect and identify the animal trapped within a given trap. State of the art deep learning is sophisticated enough today to be able to use in such identification.” This tells
us that IoT is very integratable with AI and its practices. It can open a big door when it comes to detection of different types of animals, and it can help researchers do less identification of animals and focus more on the bigger picture the data IoT will present them.
In this report they also focus on detection of poachers and it’s interesting that they’ve focused on vehicle and boat detection. The poachers in the area use four-wheel vehicles and boats, and it’s prohibited to be in the area of research after 7 pm, therefore the vehicles who are in the area in a prohibited time throughout the day, they report the authorities about the vehicle.
They also mention how boat detection techniques can parallel with car detection techniques; “…combine the data we gather from vehicle detection sensors and combine that knowledge with boat tracking data.”. The report then explains how the boats and the cars work together, as poachers have become more professional at illegal hunting and they work as a team. It’s devastating to see how illegal hunting and illegal logging are big industries.
An article by Carsten Rhod Gregersen “How IoT protects animals, reveals behaviors on World Wildlife Day” starts off with alarming information, the wildlife has lost 500 vertebrate species in the 20th century but he says that we will lose the same amount in the next 20 years. This signals how things became worse and it’s clear that we need to protect these species.
He then shines a light on the rhino horn industry ;“The rhinoceros, for example, is one of the most endangered species in the world”, then he says “…roughly 1,000 rhinos are killed by poachers every year for their horns, which can fetch between $30,000 to $100,000 per kilogram on the black market.” The article then explains how the personal guardian system for rhinos is a very expensive and a weak solution. He suggests using IoT for a more cheap and better working solution to protecting rhinos.
Image from WWF, “Poachers walk free as assault on Zimbabwe rhinos escalates”
It’s clear that IoT devices (sensors etc.) are getting cheaper and better as they are more commonly used in the world; “It’s exciting to think that this is only the start of using our best technologies to protect our most vulnerable species. All variations of IoT sensor types. from image to pressure and proximity sensors. are becoming cheaper and smaller with scale. and there is plenty of scope to enable the tracking animals that are also critically endangered. such as the Pangolin.”
There is more information on protection of Pangolin populations on the article “Video technology from Hikvision aids endangered pangolin populations”.
This article talks about the ancient creatures called pangolins and their importance when protecting wildlife in the forest. They are mostly victims of illegal hunting.
This species are very strong, and has many different tactics to run away or shield themselves. They have scales that are made from keratin which makes them very strong even compared to teeths of predators. And on top of all that the article mentions “The Pangolins’ unique features play an essential part in balancing their delicate ecosystem. Pangolins use their long curved claws to tear apart ant and termite nests. Their tongues which can be up to 16 inches long, gather insects burrowed underground. Feasting on termites and other insects keeps the gentle creatures well-fed, but it also mitigates the destruction of the forests (which includes wildlife and biodiversity) that the insects would otherwise cause.“.
But the article says that the future looks positive. governments and international organizations are providing significant resources to stop poaching of pangolins. Also, it mentions that there is a IoT technology for protecting pangolins; “The system integrates professional video software with dedicated functions including AI-equipped cameras that can identify this unique animal automatically. The system further analyses nearby animal activity and monitors human contact with wildlife”
Image from “Video technology from Hikvision aids endangered pangolin populations”
This technology provide real-time monitoring of pangolins, and it provides great information about their behavior in wildlife. And of course, this technology can be used to detect poachers.
Detection of poachers is also used when it comes to IoT research that focuses on deforestation caused by illegal logging.“IOT Based Anti-Poaching Sensor System for Trees in Forest” focuses heavily on detection of poachers. They say; “ Poaching of monetarily valuable trees has turned into a noteworthy danger to the estate of these trees…” which means that it’s a threat for the wildlife as lack of these trees hurt biodiversity.
The study mentions how the Indian government is trying to restrain exportation and sales of sandalwood, this signals how important the issue is; “The Indian sandalwood tree has turned out to be uncommon as of late, trying to control its conceivable misfortune, the government is attempting to restrain the exportation of sandalwood.”.
They explain their IoT based system in the paper, and it uses 3 main sensor types; tilt sensor (to distinguish the tendency of tree when its being cut), temperature sensor (for forest fires), sound sensor (for recognition of illicit logging, even the sounds produced while cutting out the tree is additionally detected). Data is checked with an app; “Information produced from these sensors is consistently checked with the guide of Blynk App.”, “Blynk App was planned for the Internet of Things. It can control hardware remotely.”.
They use a website for the analysis of results. They gave different trees different IDs and they can check which trees have fallen from this website with the tree ID system.
Another study focusing on trees presents a very interesting term “Internet of Trees”. The study “Forest 4.0: Digitalization of forest using the Internet of Things (IoT)” aims to drastically improve the forest’s ecosystem.
This study explained the term deforestation very well, they say deforestation is “…cutting down trees permanently for agricultural expansion, forestry mining, growth of infrastructure…”. They also mention forest fires, as they are one of the devastating reasons for deforestation. The study then says how deforestation affects wildlife, therefore biodiversity, therefore Earth as a whole.
They explain the term internet of trees with the words “…the trees are embedded with internet-based modules for sensing, communicating, and monitoring the environmental parameters in the forest…” then they mention how this technology uses the internet to share this data therefore making this technology an IoT based system.
An article that focuses on trees, In-Vivo Vibroacoustic Surveillance of Trees in the Context of the IoT, says “Wood-boring insects such as termites, weevils and certain beetles can directly affect the health and growth of specific tree species. There is a wide bibliography on piezoelectric sensors, microphones, accelerometers, laser vibrometry and optical methods used to detect locomotion and feeding sound of larvae or adult pests inside the tree trunk.”.
Their goal with their work is making automated insect surveillance everywhere in the world a common practice. They are also developing a new accelerometer-based sensor that transmits short vibration clips, that help us understand if the tree is infected or not. Another point to consider about trees is the cost of maintaining them in urban environments. Urban trees provide important things essential for the ecosystem such as regulating temperature, filtering air therefore the breath we take is excellent, and they control humidity. Although these are great things, there is another aspect of urban trees and that is the cost. Huge numbers of urban trees create problems that affect public safety. The maintaining of trees consist of inspection, watering and spraying (disinfection), and it is very costly.
A study focusing on this is; “An IoT Tree Health Indexing Method Using Heterogeneous Neural Network”. They use sensors to inspect tree health.
This study says this to emphasize the cost of maintaining urban trees; “In the US, the number of urban trees exceeds 3.5 billion. The total compensatory value of the trees, consisting of removal cost, replacement cost, costs of settling tree damages and deaths, insurance claim, and loss of property value etc., is more than $2 trillion USD.” Of course they realize how it positively affects our environment and human health “The literatures prove that the urban trees are beneficial to human mentality and physical health, such as reducing stress level and blood pressure. Besides, the urban trees provide foods and habitats to animals and other plants, thus enhancing urban biodiversity”. “The inspections and maintenances of urban trees should be conducted regularly to monitor tree health and ensure public safety.
They then explain how they used IoT to protect trees therefore wildlife; “The Internet-of-things (IoT) is a concept of mega integration and it proliferates the deployment of wireless sensors for various applications. Smart applications can be realized by employing artificial intelligence to analyze the data generated from the IoT network. An IoT tree is a tree equipped with various types of sensors. The sensors are connected to the IoT network and provide data for tree health analysis. Such method greatly increases the efficiency of tree health assessment and facilitates the urban tree planning.”
They used a system for evaluating the health of trees, so that they can have a systematic way of assessing the health of trees. “An automated tree health assessment is demanded to improve the efficiency and it can be realized by incorporating sensor monitoring network with AI-based assessment algorithm. In this paper, an automated assessment scheme is developed to evaluate and index the health of urban trees, namely Urban Tree Health Index (UTHI).”
They then note that different cities’ standards are different; “In different cities, the standards of tree health assessments can be slightly different due to the customizations with respect to the climates, land conditions, and other environmental factors.”
This study also use AI like one of the ones mentioned before; “…the indexing problem in this paper is a non-linear problem which requires an advanced algorithm to solve. Machine learning is a widely adopted method for pattern recognition, classification and prediction.”
Study then says that they developed a great tool for efficient tree health assesment with the power of IoT. This is one of the many studies, again underlines the power of IoT integrated with AI. These systems can deal with the complex issues ecosystem has, because they are very though-out and smartly designed data collection and data analization techniques.
Wildlife monitoring is extremely important for many researches and studies. Making sense of behaviour of living creatures and figuring out their habits, repeating activities is beneficial for biodiversity research. Also we need to consider dangerous human-wildlife encounters, which can hurt us and the animals in the wildlife.
There is a paper focusing on this problem, and it uses cloud computing with IoT which is very exciting. It’s “Where’s The Bear?- Automating Wildlife Image Processing Using IoT and Edge Cloud Systems” and it has very interesting conclusions.
They explain what their goal with their paper is; “In this paper, we address these challenges with the design and implementation of a new wildlife monitoring system that leverages recent advances in the Internet-of-things (IoT) and in open source image processing and deep learning for image recognition, to automate image classification and analysis. Our system, called Where’s The Bear (WTB), is an end-to-end, distributed data acquisition and analytics system that implements an IoT architecture consisting of sensors (cameras), “edge clouds,” and a back-end public or private cloud.”
To train their AI with data, they use not only the images of animals, they also empty images of the forest “…our approach combines a small number of empty images from our camera traps at different times of the day with images of animals of interest taken from Google Images.”.
“We use one camera trap (called Main) in this study to evaluate our system.”, “The cameras collect images continuously and to date they have been in use intermittently over the past 3 years to collect over 1.12M images (716.3 GB).” This tells us that these studies always use a lot of GBs of digital storage. Which is very expected, yet 716 GBs is a huge number that can’t be skipped carelessly without being addressed.
Image from ““Where’s The Bear?- Automating Wildlife Image Processing Using IoT and Edge Cloud Systems”
Here’s one of the examples of the pictures the camera captured. The deers look beautiful drinking water from a natural source, this is a great example of how wildlife is so beautiful.
In “IoT Beehives and Open Data to Gauge Urban Biodiversity”, there is a great point that was made on how urbanization is dangerous for the environment. But they also did a counter argument to that which is very interesting; “It is estimated that by 2050 about twothirds of the global population lives in cities. On the one hand, the consequence of urbanization is a large-scale loss of natural habitats, affecting people’s health and well-being”, “…on the other hand, if planned well, ‘green and blue’ cities can maintain nature-friendly habitats and provide ample opportunities for a diverse flora and fauna ecology.”.
Urbanization is considered inevitable in these times, therefore we should focus on protecting wildlife and biodiversity while urbanization is taking place in our society.
They say that their goal is a long-term objective, they want new cities to consider protecting biodiversity as a major decision in planning of cities. “Our objective is to build a
first-of-a-kind supervised machine learning model, that is able to predict urban biodiversity, based on data that can be collected real-time.”
They mention using AI in their IoT system; “Our envisioned AI aims for a system producing ecological quality measures, rather than detailed species counts. These aggregate measures express aspects of ecosystem health, focusing on species groups (insects, flowers, birds, etc.).”, “…the AI model for urban biodiversity and its underlying data engineering pipeline enable an Urban Biodiversity Monitor as a real-time service. An Interactive Bee Tracker, that shows the flight patterns as indicated by the waggle dances projected on an actual city map, and a Bee Health Dashboard might be considered as informative visualizations.”
It is interesting that the term biodiversity isn’t only a countable amount of species. It’s also being researched on DNA levels; “Biodiversity is studied at various levels, from DNA to species and even entire ecosystems.”
They say that the city map they’ve created will create awareness among citizens, becuase it will show the urgentness of the biodiversity crash; “The interactive visualization tools create for citizens awareness and a sense of urgency for the biodiversity crash.
Then they mention how it will affect city designs fo the better as AI will predict what will happen with the old style city designs; “The city digital twin combined with predictive AI tools enable policy makers to come up with city layouts that are nature friendly.”
And of course they mention how the open data their system will provide will help researchers and biologists; “…biologists might use the wealth of data that will be collected (and published as open data) to study bee behavior.
In “Emerging Technologies to Conserve Biodiversity” they mention how new technologies are being developed; “Technologies to identify individual animals, follow their movements, identify and locate animal and plant species, and assess the status of their habitats remotely have become better, faster, and cheaper as threats to the survival of species are increasing.“
In this article they talk about the new problems the new technologies create, and how some habitats are not protected because researchers generally focus mostly on the same habitats. This can be said for IoT too, as it’s getting better everyday and as the technology progresses new problems emerge because new data is giving us new information about our ecosystem, and we will be aware of the problems we didn’t know existed before. Of course this is a good thing, because we will be able to act before these problems get even bigger.
As IoT develops more and more, research on wildlife is going to get more efficient and overall better. In conclusion, it’s clear that IoT is a great tool, and hopefully IoT will continue developing. The researchers who are trying to find ways of protecting earth, wildlife, ecosystem, biodiversity and humanity from climate changes’ effects are and will be using this technology for years to come.
Literature:
- Hikvision, Video technology from Hikvision aids endangered pangolin populations, April 21 2022
- IOT Based Anti-Poaching Sensor System for Trees in Forest, Parthiban M, Dharani M, Kathiga S, Keruthika M (International Journal of Innovative Technology and Exploring Engineering (IJITEE) ISSN: 2278-3075, Volume-8, Issue-6S4, April 2019)
- Forest 0: Digitalization of forest using the Internet of Things (IoT), Rajesh Singh , Anita Gehlot , Shaik Vaseem Akram , Amit Kumar Thakur ,⇑ , Dharam Buddhi , Prabin Kumar Das (Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences)
- In-Vivo Vibroacoustic Surveillance of Trees in the Context of the IoT, Ilyas Potamitis, Iraklis Rigakis, Nicolaos-Alexandros Tatlas, Stelios Potirakis
- An IoT Tree Health Indexing Method Using Heterogeneous Neural Network, CHUNG KIT WU), KIM FUNG TSANG, YUCHENG LIU1 , HAO WANG1, HONGXU ZHU1, CHEON HOI KOO, WAI HIN WAN,, AND YANG WEI1
- Where’s The Bear?- Automating Wildlife Image Processing Using IoT and Edge Cloud Systems, Andy Rosales Elias, Nevena Golubovic, Chandra Krintz, Rich Wolski (Computer Science Dept of California, Santa Barbara, California )
7-IoT Beehives and Open Data to Gauge Urban Biodiversity, Gerard Schouten, Mirella Sangiovanni, Willem-Jan van den Heuvel
8-Emerging Technologies to Conserve Biodiversity, Stuart L. Pimm, Sky Alibhai ,Richard Bergl, Alex Dehgan, Chandra Giri, Zoë Jewell, Lucas Joppa, Roland Kays, Scott Loarie
9- Internet of Things for Efficient Wildlife Conservation: Challenges and Opportunities, Charith Perera (PI), Omer Rana, Benoît Goossens, Pablo Orozco-ter Wengel
10-Carsten Rhod Gregersen, “How IoT protects animals, reveals behaviours on World Wildlife Day”, March 08, 2021
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