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In the 1850s, leeches were used to predict violent storms. They were placed in jars of rainwater, where they literally rang alarm bells as they struggled to the surface in search of oxygen as the atmospheric pressure dropped around them.
The Tempest Prognosticator was an ornate brass-glass and mahogany instrument used by the wealthy in their drawing rooms. As it turned out, keeping the leeches healthy was a bigger challenge than it seemed.
And soon the world moved on to more granular instruments, which began to unlock the secrets behind some of Earth’s most powerful forces, from magnetism and earthquakes to storm systems and tides.
Now, as we seek new kinds of information in a rapidly changing world, science is circling back to biosurveillance.
Let’s start really small. In 2021, tiny sensors were installed in clams in the Warsaw Reservoir, alerting authorities if heavy metals or pesticides leak into the city’s drinking water supply. When exposed to such pollutants, shellfish stick together, causing alarm. Muscles has been assigned the same job in Minneapolis for more than a decade.
Spanning the frigid depths of the Antarctic Ocean, trackers placed on elephant seals have helped oceanographers survey inaccessible locations such as coastal shelves. Tiger sharks, migratory cranes and Weddell seals have similarly been deployed as unwitting data-collectors.
It helps that tags have improved dramatically. They have transformed from useless devices with relatively short battery lives of about six months, to solar-powered sensors that can weigh as little as 2 grams, and no more than 3% of the animal’s total weight. Some may also draw from the kinetic energy of the animal’s movements, and are designed to transmit data during a creature’s lifetime.
Could such sensors, by collecting readings in real time, read remotely and reprogrammed, be used to create an Internet of Animals, allowing us to assess changes occurring in our oceans, skies and biomes in real time? will gain help in? Take a look at ongoing efforts and recent successes.
the new World
Tiger sharks started behaving strangely in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of the Bahamas in 2016. These large predators hunt close to the shoreline. So when they started moving away from it, marine biologists from the non-profit organization Beneath the Waves (BTW) became eager to attach 360-degree cameras to the fish to see what was attracting them.
What they discovered, and eventually mapped with the help of sharks, was a 66,000 to 92,000 square km seagrass ecosystem that had not been detected (and still cannot be detected) by satellite images of the sub-sea terrain.
BTW, a 2022 paper published in the journal Nature Communications says this is the world’s largest known seagrass ecosystem. “Since seagrass beds are excellent sources of capturing or sequestering carbon (~17% of ocean carbon), this discovery provides the world with a better idea of the ocean’s ability to store carbon that would otherwise be stored in the atmosphere.” It happens, BTW said in a statement.
deeper depth
Deep-diving Weddell and elephant seals are helping to map the floor of the Antarctic shelf, with the result that oceanographers are now estimating how deep the sea is here, and adding underwater features to existing maps, Which also includes a sea valley nearby. Vanderford Glacier.
In a study published in the Nature journal Communications Earth & Environment in August, researchers from the University of Tasmania’s Institute of Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS) reported that seals were diving into the ocean up to 1,000 meters deeper than current estimates. land.
Even more revealingly, the sensors revealed that there were hot water channels; A discovery with serious implications for ice shelves and ice-shelf cavities amid rising ocean temperatures.
“If we can trace exactly where water reaches the bottom of the shelves, we will be in an even better position to measure melt rates, freshwater inputs into the ocean, and other variables that will affect our future oceans and climate.” Will be in,” study co-author and IMAS ecology and biodiversity professor Mark Hindell said in a statement.
animals first?
Researchers in ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale University believe current methods of collecting weather and climate data may become obsolete as we learn to better use sensors, gleaning data and insights from animals on the move. .
In a paper published in the journal Nature Climate Change in September, researchers showed how “active environmental sentinels” can close critical data gaps by measuring air temperature, pollution, ocean salinity and a range of other metrics in real time , which provides a significant advantage. Stable traditional systems are already struggling to function in a climate-change world.
For example, monkeys with GPS sensors can relay information about the temperature on the ground beneath a cloud-covered forest canopy. Sensors mounted on mountain goats can provide real-time data on temperature fluctuations in mountainous areas where weather stations cannot be built. Storks can give in-depth readings of the strength of wind speed and wind movements over the oceans, even with implications for flight paths and turbulence.
And domestic animals such as cows, sheep and dogs can warn against earthquakes through changes in their behavior up to 20 hours before an earthquake occurs.
In 2020, researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the Center for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour, University of Konstanz studied unusually high activity levels in farm animals before the earthquake. It is possible that their fur helps them sense the ionization of the air caused by changes in ambient pressure, or that they can smell some of the gases released before an earthquake.
Further studies could determine what conditions cause birds to lay fewer eggs in years before a complex weather event such as El Niño or to build their nests before flooding. (One explanation involves the theory that we live in a simulation, but this, of course, is an entirely different field of study.)
Future
The plan is so bold that it has been named ICARUS (International Collaboration for Animal Research Using Space).
Researchers Martin Wikelski and Uschi Müller from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior are testing an experimental tracking system that will begin data collection in October, involving sensors attached to animals and birds around the world and receivers fitted on a very small satellite. Will be used, namely CubeSat.
Scientists will be able to download data and reprogram any or all sensors remotely.
The CubeSat will orbit in low-Earth orbit, allowing it to circle the planet several times a day. As a result, it can gather data from around the world, giving scientists fresh updates from isolated deserts, polar ice fields, oceans and skies.
In the first phase, conducted in March 2021, solar-powered sensors (which weigh less than 5 grams) were deployed in 15 species, including songbirds, rodents and fish.
The researchers’ goal is to eventually create an “Internet of animals” that provides individual readings and observations of movements, and to predict, track, and mitigate aspects of climate change, biodiversity loss, disease, and human and non-human threats. Uses such data. -human population.
For example, ships could potentially be told when to reduce speed, to avoid collisions with whale colonies. Zoonotic data can track the emergence and spread of new viruses.
The real-time connection of disparate pieces of information will allow us to identify cause and effect and ultimately make predictions about natural phenomena we did not previously understand, Wikelski said in a statement.
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