Soil Sensors and their Wireless Underground Network for Precision Farming and Environmental Management

该项目的目标是：(1)用于监测土壤水分和硝酸盐等土壤性质的现场土壤传感器；(2)用于自主采集土壤属性时空变化的地下无线传感器网络；(3)基于分布式监测的信息管理和决策技术，用于农业生产系统的建模和分析。其智力优势是：(1)为研究人员开发基于网络的框架，以更好地了解土壤和大范围环境的性质；(2)建立地下传感器和通信网络；(3)开发农业中的施肥管理工具，以最大限度地减少对环境的影响，同时满足作物的需求。更广泛的影响是：(1)拟议的计划是朝着精确控制化肥使用的方向迈出的一步，这将有助于减少径流到流域的径流，并将环境影响降至最低；(2)拟议的地下传感器网络将用于任何需要远程地下分布式传感、防止地面活动(人类、火灾等)或隐蔽(如边境巡逻)的应用；(3)地下网络基础设施可用于其他研究团体，如遥感，以校准/验证他们自己的设备/算法；(4)三名博士生将接受农业科学、土壤传感、地下无线网络和基于作物/水文流量/碳循环模型的决策的跨学科领域的培训。该提案的变革性组成部分是：(1)将信息和网络系统技术引入农业领域，用于精确、频繁和高分辨率地测量土壤特性，并以测量为驱动的农业投入控制；(2)开发具有地下通信、节能运行、定位和故障恢复能力的无线传感器网络基础设施；(3)开发精确且可现场部署的传感器，用于测量土壤属性，如水分和养分。

The objectives of this program are to develop: (1) In-situ soil sensors for monitoring soil properties such as soil moisture and nitrates; (2) Underground wireless sensor network for autonomously gathering the spatio-temporally varying soil properties; (3) Information management and decision-making technology based on distributed monitoring for modeling and analysis of agricultural production systems.The intellectual merits are: (1) Development of a network based framework for researchers to better understand properties of soils and the environment over a large area; (2) Establishment of an underground sensor and communication network; (3) Development of tools for fertilization management in farming for minimizing their environmental impact while meeting crop demands.The broader impacts are: (1) The proposed program is a step toward precisely controlling fertilizer application that will help reduce their run-offs to the watersheds and minimizing the environmental impact; (2) The proposed underground sensor network will find its use in any application requiring remote underground distributed-sensing, safety against surface activities (human, fire, etc.), or covertness (e.g., border patrol); (3) The underground network infrastructure can be used by other research community such as(remote-sensing) to calibrate/validate their own equipment/algorithms; (4) Three Ph.D. students will be trained in an interdisciplinary area of agriculture sciences, soil sensing, underground wireless networking, and decision-making based on crop/hydrologic-flow/carbon-cycle models.The transformative components of the proposal are: (1) Introduction of information and cybersystem technologies to the field of agriculture for precise, frequent, and high-resolution measurement of soil properties, and measurement-driven control of agriculture inputs; (2) Development of a wireless sensor network infrastructure capable of underground communication, energy-efficient operation, localization, and resiliency to failures; (3) Development of accurate and field-deployable sensors for measuring soil properties such as moisture and nutrient.