Weather Motes
Plants and animals are both highly sensitive to local differences in weather and climate conditions. For example, you will find different plants and animals along a wooded creek bank than you would find up the hill on a south facing, grassy field. To this end, the phenology garden has built a "mote" field in the phenology garden area. These "motes" are small, solar powered, wireless, weather stations which can measure air and soil conditions. Currently we have 4 motes in our wireless garden. One at the camera, and three ground motes located at various places in the garden. They are labelled "Pole Mote 1" and "Ground Motes 1,2 and 3"
Each mote can measure air temp, brightness, relative humidity and barometric pressure.
In addition:
• The pole mote can measure rainfall, wind speed and wind direction
• The ground motes can measure soil moisture and soil temperature
By measuring these local "microclimate" conditions, researchers can then map the plants and animals in the location to their respective microclimates. The last available measurements are listed on the garden's homepage. Rsearchers who want to access the historical records may contact HBS at: hbs@email.wcu.edu or going to our contact page.
Why a mote? The term comes from Intel research in the quest for smaller and smaller sensors. Their goal for climate sensors is to make them the size of a "mote" in ones eye!
If needed, our network could expand to over 64000 motes!
