“Not All Who Wander Are Lost.” ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Okay, if you are reading my blog then I warn you, you might become insanely jealous, particularly if you are a field person, as I feel I now have scored the ultimate job. Not that my last job wasn’t incredibly cool, 26 amazing years as the director of the world famous James Reserve in the San Jacinto Mountains, an “eco-geeks” paradise where robots and sensors continuously monitor the “heart-beat” of an ecosystem. If that job required me to wear many hats (it did) then this new one will certainly force me to enlarge my hat rack!

“JR” as my colleagues refer to the James Reserve, among the varied uses typical of any really busy NRS reserve, has the singular distinction of being the first NRS reserve to become a test-bed for biologists, computer science and engineering students and faculty whose shared experiments using embedded networked sensing systems must pass the test of deployment under the rigors and inevitable failures imposed upon their inventions by mother nature. Most of these folks are affiliated with the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing, or CENS, directed by UCLA  Professor Deborah Estrin. Wearing a CENS cap, my role over the years has been to lead the Terrestrial Ecology Observing Systems group at CENS, coordinating the testbed activities, working with ecologists and other field “ologists” to try out the next generation of sensor and network technologies that will allow their observations and field measurements to automatically and continuously follow them via the Internet wherever they might be.    

While I am constantly reminding my colleagues that these new tools are simply that, and not intended to replace their field work, or their students, but rather to dramatically increase the reliability, frequency, quantity and area from which their studies can explore. If we have learned one thing in the 6 years of CENS, its that this stuff requires more people to be involved, not fewer. But in exchange for the increased cost of using networked sensing technologies is the promise that it can be reliably scaled up to hundreds and eventually thousands of devices covering very large landscapes and varied and complex ecosystems, yet manageable by the same number of people as it takes to run just a few traditional data recording weather stations. But its hard to test that concept on a small 30 acre reserve, and there are nearly 550 continuously operating fixed sensors at JR!

When I was hired for the James Reserve in the summer of 1982, fresh out of graduate school where I studied rare and endangered plants of the San Jacinto Mountains, one of the first tasks I was given was to figure out how to bring electricity to the reserve. Just like Blue Oak Ranch is today, the James Reserve was entirely off the grid, surrounded by national forest miles away from the nearest power line. The previous owners, Harry and Grace James, choose a simple retro lifestyle for their retirement home at JR, living off the grid in a log cabin they built themselves, heating with only a couple of wood fireplaces, and using kerosene lamps for lighting. This was pretty much the setting when I arrived, and armed with what seemed like a huge budget ($10,000) I set about converting my new place into something closer to a 20th century home. I knew I would miss having access to a mainframe, but having just read about these new “personal computers” I was keen to get one as soon as I figured out how I would plug it in.

Those were the days, and in what can certainly be called the ultimate in “deja vu” as I am now facing an analogous situation as I once had, pondering how to instead bring a 3,360 acre reserve “on-line” with power, high speed wireless networks, accommodations, and the space to do the field science of the 21st century. The starting budget is 500 times larger than what I had in 1982 (although considering inflation its probably less than half that) and the land area of BORR is just a bit more than 100 times bigger than the James Reserve, offering a suitable challenge for scaling up sensor networks by at least a factor of 10, to a respectable 1000 nodes and 5,000 sensors. At least thats our goal. It will certainly help to have friends in “high places” as the astronomers on the top of Mount Hamilton not only have a great view of the heavens, but also an unobstructed view from their roof of nearly 50% of BORR, and only 5 miles by line of sight. In the works is a collaboration between Lick Observatory, UCSC, NASA AMES and us to bring a 100 megabit wireless internet link up to the observatory from AMES, and then feed a chunk of that network into locations within BORR. Based on some preliminary view-shed analysis in my trusty GIS, we should be able to blanket most of the 3,000 acres with broadband wireless in only one or two hops, comprising perhaps 10 small relay towers. This level of digital coverage will be spectacular, paving the way to building embedded sensors and imagers to study just about anything one can imagine. I’m personally very excited about animal telemetry applications as well as new tools for monitoring plant phenology and physiology across multiple scales. This could lead to breakthroughs in understanding why the oak trees do not seem to successfully regenerate.

Writing this reminds me of yet another analog to my first UC career. Besides making a new home, one of the tasks at the James Reserve was to build a trail system so that classes and researchers could access the habitats in the reserve and nearby Hall Canyon Research Natural Area.  I can now mentally plot the locations of many research papers, theses and dissertations that made good use of those trails, and what a valuable piece of “infrastructure” those trails became. Today at Blue Oak Ranch Reserve I am building the digital equivalent of a trail system, and I predict it will be in those locations served by our wireless networks that our future field biologists will choose to conduct their studies, about which to write their papers and complete their dissertations. Of course they still may need a trail or two to get there, we wouldn’t want them to wander about and get lost!

Mike Hamilton, Director

The Cedar Barn

Blue Oak Ranch Reserve

April 2008