The Open Digital Environmental Lab

The development of new affordable sensors, and the ability to log high-resolution data for long periods of time can potentially revolutionize environmental sciences. Collecting high-resolution spatiotemporal data requires sensor grids that are often costly and not necessarily modular enough to fit a specific experimental objective. These are limiting factors that can be solved using open-source hardware. In our Open Digital Environmental Lab, we develop and integrate complex sensor arrays into our research that simultaneously measure multiple parameters, such as water content and CO₂  and O₂  concentrations. We rely on integrating IoT (Internet of Things) concepts and aim to meet not only our current research goals, but also to enable new capabilities at a fraction of traditional sensor costs but with similar accuracy. Our vision is that open-source sensors will: (1) “Democratize science” by reducing cost limitations, and (2) Be game-changers for measuring environmental parameters with the ability to capture process-related heterogeneity. At the conference, we will present various projects, ranging from lab-oriented devices to field networks for real-time monitoring of soil and river parameters that allow new modeling and mechanistic understandings.