Long-Term Monitoring of the Sierra Nevada Snowpack Using Wireless Sensor Networks
Ziran Zhang, Steven D. Glaser, Thomas Watteyne, Sami Malek
Abstract
Historically, the study of mountain hydrology and the water cycle has been largely observational, with meteorological forcing and hydrological variables extrapolated from a few infrequent manual measurements. Recent developments in the Internet of Things (IoT) technology are revolutionizing the field of mountain hydrology. Low-power wireless sensor networks can now generate denser data in real time and for a fraction of the cost of labor-intensive manual measurement campaigns. The American River Hydrological Observatory (ARHO) project has deployed 13 low-power wireless IoT networks throughout the American River basin to monitor California’s snowpack. The networks feature a total of 945 environmental sensors, each reporting a reading every 15 min. The data reported is made available to the scientific community minutes after it is generated. This article provides an in-depth technical description of the ARHO project. It details the requirements and different technical options, describes the technology deployed today, and discusses the challenges associated with large-scale environmental monitoring in extreme conditions.