Rising average annual temperatures and changing precipitation patterns make it necessary to reforest sustainably, i.e., to plant other tree species and test them for later use. In addition, large open areas need to be reforested quickly and larger young trees in avenues should soon act as windbreakers. These young plants are very sensitive to stress factors. The Waldmonitor (“Forest Monitor”) project has set itself the goal of developing a sensor system as an early warning system for stress indicators. It is intended to determine vital parameters and growth status as well as biotic and abiotic influencing factors.

The Waldmonitor project is developing a sensor system that continuously collects information on young trees without the forester having to be on-site. A stationary overall system as a pilot installation evaluates various optical and classic sensor principles. The results will flow into a proposal for the optimal selection of sensor systems for a tailored monitoring system that also offers the potential to be used on mobile platforms at a later date.

The aim of the IMMS WaldSensCom sub-project is to develop adaptive energy-autonomous sensor systems for monitoring site factors in the forest environment and to ensure a continuous flow of data from the study areas in the forest to a central evaluation system.

The challenge here is that there is no comprehensive mobile phone coverage in the forest. To ensure continuous transmission despite this, concepts for interruption tolerance and the use of multi-hop LoRa communications to bridge gaps are being tested. To transmit the required amount of data efficiently, concepts for data reduction and local evaluation of the recorded abiotic site parameters are also being investigated with regard to forestry aspects. The aim is to ensure the transport of all relevant data, even if the connection from the test areas to the server cannot be permanently established due to, e.g., a lack of energy or communications infrastructure.

In addition, wireless sensor networks are being designed and implemented together with project partner Orbit. IMMS provides support with the energy-autonomous and size-optimised implementation of sensor nodes for abiotic parameters and takes care of the evaluation of the recorded data.