Space-Enabled Smart Sensing for Forest Monitoring

The Challenge

Australia lack’s dense persistent monitoring networks that measure forest health against threats like drought and wildfire. This limits effective management decisions which are often done retrospectively after natural hazards, rather than forward-looking based on prediceted risk areas. To enable this, accurate sensing data that captures both environmetal health parameters and biodiversity measruements across a large scale is needed. Currently these measurements are contrained only to areas where there is sufficient access and connectivity, rather than where the environmental risk is greatest.

The Solution

This project will seek to address this gap by enabling sensors with emerging low-earth orbit satellite links that provide connectivity beyond terrestrial mobile coverage. Western Sydney University will lead the deplouying of a multi-sensor network in the Greater Blue Mountain regions, drawing on expertise in forest physiology and sensor-enabled environmental observation. The collaboration with UNSW will extend this capability towards carbon farming pratices. Together, these sites span broad climatic gradients, drom mesic forests to arid and semi-arid woodlands. 

More than the physical hardware networking, the selection of sensor technologies and data streams protocols will set a standard for future integratred forest monitoring efforts. The collaboration with OQ Technologies will enable this effort, and the link with both the Blue Mountains World Heritage Institute and Scenic World will be critical in acquiring the best trial locations for the study. The partnership with the NSW Space Research Network is also vital in enabling this project.

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