Technology symposium envisions a global integration of satellites and sensors

The past decade has seen a dramatic increase in the number of sensors designed and deployed to measure planetary change. One major challenge is deriving reliable and useful data at the global scale.

During a recent conference hosted by the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and Graduate School of Business, experts discussed how to make advanced sensor technologies more affordable, easily integrated, and their data openly accessible to inform sustainability solutions.

“It’s not sustainable to continue living the way we are living on this planet,” said conference co-organizer Rosemary Knight, the George L. Harrington Professor and a professor of geophysics at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. “I’m hopeful that by taking the pulse of the planet, we can manage its health more effectively and support human well-being.”

Knight urged attendees to think about what possibilities open up when sensors are integrated across land, freshwater, and ocean environments, the vision of a new faculty-led research and teaching effort at Stanford called “Taking the Pulse of the Planet.”

Illuminating gaps

Around the world, sensors deployed on satellites, on aircraft, on land, and in water collect data from Earth’s atmosphere, continents, and oceans that enable scientists to observe a whale’s heart rate, calculate forest cover, and measure greenhouse gas emissions, among innumerable other capabilities. Yet many aspects of life on Earth and its systems remain unobserved and poorly understood.

“Biology offers us a series of novels about how the world is working, and yet we can only read about a word per day,” said Jennifer Dionne, professor of materials science and engineering in the Stanford School of Engineering. 

Dionne emphasized the need to collect more data with greater speed and efficiency to improve environmental monitoring and human health. Her lab harnesses the properties of light to glean information about biological, chemical, and environmental interactions that are invisible to the naked eye.

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Anuscheh Nawaz from the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory noted how some sensors like ocean buoys are often unrecoverable and therefore polluting. She urged attendees to consider biodegradable materials in sensor construction. 

Many sensing technologies are also costly and difficult to deploy, operate, and maintain, particularly in remote locations with limited or no infrastructure.

According to Ettore Biondi, an assistant professor of geophysics who presented at the symposium, solutions can be hiding in plain sight. Biondi discussed how leveraging the optical properties of subterranean telecommunication fibers, which transmit data as light signals along their length, can also enable groundwater monitoring.

“We have fibers everywhere, even in the ocean,” Biondi said. “The beauty of this is that by connecting an instrument to existing fibers, you transform it into a system composed of thousands of channels.”

Strength in synergy

Conference speakers emphasized the value of data integration. According to scientist Yui Takeshita of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, global observing networks are optimized when integrated with one another. 

Takeshita described how his team combined data collected from ships and satellites to observe a “greening” of the Southern Ocean. Linking nitrate concentrations in seawater with images from space, the team documented an explosive growth of microscopic algae that form the basis of marine food chains.

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Elizabeth Selig, Deputy Director of the Stanford Center for Ocean Solutions, offered another example of data integration. She described a research collaboration that combined satellite data of fishing vessel movements with surveys of experts to understand where and which vessels are at a high risk of illegal fishing and labor abuses at sea and in port.

Different sensor designs are often required to enable data collection across different timeframes. For example, conference attendee Kristen Manies of the U.S. Geological Survey described flying drones outfitted with methane sensors to quantify emissions from bogs in Alaska. The drones can nimbly collect data in remote areas, but have limited battery life. Stanford research professor Leo Hollberg’s lab, meanwhile, has developed a low-cost sensor that can continuously measure methane emissions from wetlands for days at a time, but it requires power and connectivity. 

Sharing solutions

According to conference co-organizer Fiorenza Micheli, the advancement of sensor technology is not enough. “We need partnerships to transform data into useful information on platforms that are accessible to those who need it,” said Micheli, the David and Lucile Packard Professor in Marine Science, professor of oceans, and co-director of the Center for Ocean Solutions.

Conference attendees found inspiration in NASA senior research scientist Forrest Melton’s presentation on OpenET, a project led by the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View. OpenET calculates how much water falls as precipitation and then returns to the atmosphere as vapor, a process known as evapotranspiration. This calculation is critical for farmers to schedule irrigation for their fields.

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“If you want to understand water supply and demand, not having a measurement of evapotranspiration is like having to balance your checking account without having any idea how much you’re spending,” Melton said.

Through consultations with California farmers, the OpenET team integrated satellite and water data into elegant, graphical interfaces. They then designed an open-access, user-friendly platform that farmers can consult to inform their water management practices.

Christian Lim reinforced the importance of collecting and sharing data in the service of others. Lim manages SWEN Blue Ocean, a venture capital fund that invests in innovation to regenerate ocean health and biodiversity.

“Data alone do not have impact,” Lim said. “What has impact is how you use them.”

View the list of conference speakers. Conference co-organizers include Alison Hoyt, assistant professor of Earth system science and a center fellow, by courtesy, at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment; Rosemary Knight and Fiorenza Micheli, who are also senior fellows at the Woods Institute for the Environment; and Howard Zebker, the Kwoh Ting Li Professor and a professor of electrical engineering in the School of Engineering and of geophysics in the Doerr School of Sustainability.

Dionne is also a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator, a senior fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy, and a professor, by courtesy, of radiology in the School of Medicine.