Measuring Tree Properties and Responses Using Low-Cost Accelerometers
Abstract
Trees play a crucial role in the water, carbon and nitrogen cycle on local, regional and global scales. Understanding the exchange of momentum, heat, water, and CO 2 between trees and the atmosphere is important to assess the impact of drought, deforestation and climate change. Unfortunately, ground measurements of tree properties such as mass and canopy interception of precipitation are often expensive or difficult due to challenging environments. This paper aims to demonstrate the concept of using robust and affordable accelerometers to measure tree properties and responses. Tree sway is dependent on mass, canopy structure, drag coefficient, and wind forcing. By measuring tree acceleration, we can relate the tree motion to external forcing (e.g., wind, precipitation and related canopy interception) and tree physical properties (e.g., mass, elasticity). Using five months of acceleration data of 19 trees in the Brazilian Amazon, we show that the frequency spectrum of tree sway is related to mass, canopy interception of precipitation, and canopy–atmosphere turbulent exchange.
- Authors:
-
- Delft Univ. of Technology (Netherlands)
- Columbia Univ., New York, NY (United States)
- Univ. of Campinas (UNICAMP), Sao Paulo (Brazil)
- Oregon Research Electronics, Tangent, OR (United States)
- Oregon State Univ., Corvallis, OR (United States)
- Publication Date:
- Research Org.:
- Columbia Univ., New York, NY (United States)
- Sponsoring Org.:
- USDOE
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1426864
- Grant/Contract Number:
- SC0011094
- Resource Type:
- Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Name:
- Sensors
- Additional Journal Information:
- Journal Volume: 17; Journal Issue: 12; Journal ID: ISSN 1424-8220
- Publisher:
- MDPI AG
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
Citation Formats
van Emmerik, Tim, Steele-Dunne, Susan, Hut, Rolf, Gentine, Pierre, Guerin, Marceau, Oliveira, Rafael, Wagner, Jim, Selker, John, and van de Giesen, Nick. Measuring Tree Properties and Responses Using Low-Cost Accelerometers. United States: N. p., 2017.
Web. doi:10.3390/s17051098.
van Emmerik, Tim, Steele-Dunne, Susan, Hut, Rolf, Gentine, Pierre, Guerin, Marceau, Oliveira, Rafael, Wagner, Jim, Selker, John, & van de Giesen, Nick. Measuring Tree Properties and Responses Using Low-Cost Accelerometers. United States. https://doi.org/10.3390/s17051098
van Emmerik, Tim, Steele-Dunne, Susan, Hut, Rolf, Gentine, Pierre, Guerin, Marceau, Oliveira, Rafael, Wagner, Jim, Selker, John, and van de Giesen, Nick. Thu .
"Measuring Tree Properties and Responses Using Low-Cost Accelerometers". United States. https://doi.org/10.3390/s17051098. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1426864.
@article{osti_1426864,
title = {Measuring Tree Properties and Responses Using Low-Cost Accelerometers},
author = {van Emmerik, Tim and Steele-Dunne, Susan and Hut, Rolf and Gentine, Pierre and Guerin, Marceau and Oliveira, Rafael and Wagner, Jim and Selker, John and van de Giesen, Nick},
abstractNote = {Trees play a crucial role in the water, carbon and nitrogen cycle on local, regional and global scales. Understanding the exchange of momentum, heat, water, and CO 2 between trees and the atmosphere is important to assess the impact of drought, deforestation and climate change. Unfortunately, ground measurements of tree properties such as mass and canopy interception of precipitation are often expensive or difficult due to challenging environments. This paper aims to demonstrate the concept of using robust and affordable accelerometers to measure tree properties and responses. Tree sway is dependent on mass, canopy structure, drag coefficient, and wind forcing. By measuring tree acceleration, we can relate the tree motion to external forcing (e.g., wind, precipitation and related canopy interception) and tree physical properties (e.g., mass, elasticity). Using five months of acceleration data of 19 trees in the Brazilian Amazon, we show that the frequency spectrum of tree sway is related to mass, canopy interception of precipitation, and canopy–atmosphere turbulent exchange.},
doi = {10.3390/s17051098},
journal = {Sensors},
number = 12,
volume = 17,
place = {United States},
year = {Thu May 11 00:00:00 EDT 2017},
month = {Thu May 11 00:00:00 EDT 2017}
}
Free Publicly Available Full Text
Publisher's Version of Record
Other availability
Search WorldCat to find libraries that may hold this journal
Cited by: 27 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science
Web of Science
Save to My Library
You must Sign In or Create an Account in order to save documents to your library.
Works referenced in this record:
Consequences of climate change on the tree of life in Europe
journal, February 2011
- Thuiller, Wilfried; Lavergne, Sébastien; Roquet, Cristina
- Nature, Vol. 470, Issue 7335
Tree rainfall interception measured by stem compression: TREE RAINFALL INTERCEPTION
journal, April 2008
- Friesen, J.; van Beek, C.; Selker, J.
- Water Resources Research, Vol. 44, Issue 4
Impact of Diurnal Variation in Vegetation Water Content on Radar Backscatter From Maize During Water Stress
journal, July 2015
- van Emmerik, Tim; Steele-Dunne, Susan C.; Judge, Jasmeet
- IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, Vol. 53, Issue 7
Rate of tree carbon accumulation increases continuously with tree size
journal, January 2014
- Stephenson, N. L.; Das, A. J.; Condit, R.
- Nature, Vol. 507, Issue 7490
Oscillation damping in trees
journal, June 2013
- Spatz, Hanns-Christof; Theckes, Benoit
- Plant Science, Vol. 207
New technique to measure forest floor interception – an application in a beech forest in Luxembourg
journal, January 2007
- Gerrits, A. M. J.; Savenije, H. H. G.; Hoffmann, L.
- Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, Vol. 11, Issue 2
Terrestrial water fluxes dominated by transpiration
journal, April 2013
- Jasechko, Scott; Sharp, Zachary D.; Gibson, John J.
- Nature, Vol. 496, Issue 7445
Amazon forests maintain consistent canopy structure and greenness during the dry season
journal, February 2014
- Morton, Douglas C.; Nagol, Jyoteshwar; Carabajal, Claudia C.
- Nature, Vol. 506, Issue 7487
Using Diurnal Variation in Backscatter to Detect Vegetation Water Stress
journal, July 2012
- Steele-Dunne, Susan C.; Friesen, Jan; van de Giesen, Nick
- IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, Vol. 50, Issue 7
Evaluation of drag coefficients of poplar-tree crowns by a field test method
journal, January 2010
- Koizumi, Akio; Motoyama, Jun-ichi; Sawata, Kei
- Journal of Wood Science, Vol. 56, Issue 3
Hyperdominance in Amazonian forest carbon cycling
journal, April 2015
- Fauset, Sophie; Johnson, Michelle O.; Gloor, Manuel
- Nature Communications, Vol. 6, Issue 1
A green illusion
journal, February 2014
- Soudani, Kamel; François, Christophe
- Nature, Vol. 506, Issue 7487
Large-Eddy Atmosphere–Land-Surface Modelling over Heterogeneous Surfaces: Model Development and Comparison with Measurements
journal, April 2013
- Shao, Yaping; Liu, Shaofeng; Schween, Jan H.
- Boundary-Layer Meteorology, Vol. 148, Issue 2
Atmospheric Stability Influences on Coupled Boundary Layer and Canopy Turbulence
journal, April 2016
- Patton, Edward G.; Sullivan, Peter P.; Shaw, Roger H.
- Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, Vol. 73, Issue 4
In situ drag coefficient measurements for rooftop trees
journal, May 2016
- Koizumi, Akio; Shimizu, Misato; Sasaki, Yoshihisa
- Journal of Wood Science, Vol. 62, Issue 4
Large-eddy simulation of turbulent flow above and within a forest
journal, October 1992
- Shaw, Roger H.; Schumann, Ulrich
- Boundary-Layer Meteorology, Vol. 61, Issue 1-2
A numerical model of tree aerodynamic response to a turbulent airflow
journal, July 2008
- Sellier, D.; Brunet, Y.; Fourcaud, T.
- Forestry, Vol. 81, Issue 3
Responses of an individual deciduous broadleaved tree to wind excitation
journal, August 2013
- Schindler, Dirk; Schönborn, Jochen; Fugmann, Hannes
- Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, Vol. 177
Leaf flush drives dry season green-up of the Central Amazon
journal, September 2016
- Lopes, Aline Pontes; Nelson, Bruce Walker; Wu, Jin
- Remote Sensing of Environment, Vol. 182
Role of surface heat fluxes underneath cold pools
journal, January 2016
- Gentine, Pierre; Garelli, Alix; Park, Seung‐Bu
- Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 43, Issue 2
The use of precision dendrometers in research on daily stem size and wood property variation: A review
journal, January 2009
- Drew, David M.; Downes, Geoffrey M.
- Dendrochronologia, Vol. 27, Issue 2
The Local Structure of Turbulence in Incompressible Viscous Fluid for Very Large Reynolds Numbers
journal, July 1991
- Kolmogorov, A. N.
- Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, Vol. 434, Issue 1890
Plant Responses to Water Stress
journal, June 1973
- Hsiao, Theodore C.
- Annual Review of Plant Physiology, Vol. 24, Issue 1
A prism-based system for monitoring the swaying of trees under wind loading
journal, April 1998
- Hassinen, Alpo; Lemettinen, Matti; Peltola, Heli
- Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, Vol. 90, Issue 3
Amazon rainforests green-up with sunlight in dry season
journal, January 2006
- Huete, Alfredo R.; Didan, Kamel; Shimabukuro, Yosio E.
- Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 33, Issue 6
A resonating rainfall and evaporation recorder: TECHNICAL NOTE
journal, August 2012
- Stewart, Ryan D.; Hut, Rolf; Rupp, David E.
- Water Resources Research, Vol. 48, Issue 8
Effects of tropical deforestation on climate and agriculture
journal, December 2014
- Lawrence, Deborah; Vandecar, Karen
- Nature Climate Change, Vol. 5, Issue 1
Dielectric Response of Corn Leaves to Water Stress
journal, January 2017
- Van Emmerik, Tim; Steele-Dunne, Susan C.; Judge, Jasmeet
- IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, Vol. 14, Issue 1
An improved Cauchy number approach for predicting the drag and reconfiguration of flexible vegetation
journal, September 2015
- Whittaker, Peter; Wilson, Catherine A. M. E.; Aberle, Jochen
- Advances in Water Resources, Vol. 83
Transpiration in the global water cycle
journal, June 2014
- Schlesinger, William H.; Jasechko, Scott
- Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, Vol. 189-190
Modeling the Exchanges of Energy, Water, and Carbon Between Continents and the Atmosphere
journal, January 1997
- Sellers, P. J.
- Science, Vol. 275, Issue 5299
Some drag coefficients for british forest trees derived from wind tunnel studies
journal, January 1973
- Mayhead, G. J.
- Agricultural Meteorology, Vol. 12
Wind and remnant tree sway in forest cutblocks. II. Relating measured tree sway to wind statistics
journal, March 1999
- Flesch, Thomas K.; Wilson, John D.
- Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, Vol. 93, Issue 4
Towards a worldwide wood economics spectrum
journal, April 2009
- Chave, Jerome; Coomes, David; Jansen, Steven
- Ecology Letters, Vol. 12, Issue 4
Including the Drag Effects of Canopies: Real Case Large-Eddy Simulation Studies
journal, August 2012
- Aumond, Pierre; Masson, Valery; Lac, Christine
- Boundary-Layer Meteorology, Vol. 146, Issue 1
Climate extremes and the carbon cycle
journal, August 2013
- Reichstein, Markus; Bahn, Michael; Ciais, Philippe
- Nature, Vol. 500, Issue 7462
Natural sway frequencies and damping ratios of trees: concepts, review and synthesis of previous studies
journal, March 2004
- Moore, John R.; Maguire, Douglas A.
- Trees - Structure and Function, Vol. 18, Issue 2
Climate change and European forests: What do we know, what are the uncertainties, and what are the implications for forest management?
journal, December 2014
- Lindner, Marcus; Fitzgerald, Joanne B.; Zimmermann, Niklaus E.
- Journal of Environmental Management, Vol. 146
Carbon Dioxide Exchange between an Undisturbed Old-Growth Temperate Forest and the Atmosphere
journal, January 1994
- Hollinger, D. Y.; Kelliher, F. M.; Byers, J. N.
- Ecology, Vol. 75, Issue 1
An improved heat pulse method to measure low and reverse rates of sap flow in woody plants
journal, June 2001
- Burgess, S. S. O.; Adams, M. A.; Turner, N. C.
- Tree Physiology, Vol. 21, Issue 9
Swaying of trees in response to wind and thinning in a stand of Scots pine
journal, February 1996
- Peltola, Heli
- Boundary-Layer Meteorology, Vol. 77, Issue 3-4
A noninvasive optical system for the measurement of xylem and phloem sap flow in woody plants of small stem size
journal, February 2007
- Helfter, C.; Shephard, J. D.; Martinez-Vilalta, J.
- Tree Physiology, Vol. 27, Issue 2
Data Acquisition System for Wind Induced Tree Vibration
book, January 1985
- Amtmann, R.
- The Forest-Atmosphere Interaction
Evaluation of drag coefficients of poplar-tree crowns by a field test method
journal, January 2010
- Koizumi, Akio; Motoyama, Jun-ichi; Sawata, Kei
- Journal of Wood Science, Vol. 56, Issue 3
In situ drag coefficient measurements for rooftop trees
journal, May 2016
- Koizumi, Akio; Shimizu, Misato; Sasaki, Yoshihisa
- Journal of Wood Science, Vol. 62, Issue 4
Including the Drag Effects of Canopies: Real Case Large-Eddy Simulation Studies
journal, August 2012
- Aumond, Pierre; Masson, Valery; Lac, Christine
- Boundary-Layer Meteorology, Vol. 146, Issue 1
Discerning the forest from the trees: an essay on scaling canopy stomatal conductance
journal, April 1991
- Baldocchi, Dennis D.; Luxmoore, Robert J.; Hatfield, Jerry L.
- Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, Vol. 54, Issue 2-4
An improved Cauchy number approach for predicting the drag and reconfiguration of flexible vegetation
journal, September 2015
- Whittaker, Peter; Wilson, Catherine A. M. E.; Aberle, Jochen
- Advances in Water Resources, Vol. 83
Responses of an individual deciduous broadleaved tree to wind excitation
journal, August 2013
- Schindler, Dirk; Schönborn, Jochen; Fugmann, Hannes
- Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, Vol. 177
Climate change and European forests: What do we know, what are the uncertainties, and what are the implications for forest management?
journal, December 2014
- Lindner, Marcus; Fitzgerald, Joanne B.; Zimmermann, Niklaus E.
- Journal of Environmental Management, Vol. 146
Oscillation damping in trees
journal, June 2013
- Spatz, Hanns-Christof; Theckes, Benoit
- Plant Science, Vol. 207
Leaf flush drives dry season green-up of the Central Amazon
journal, September 2016
- Lopes, Aline Pontes; Nelson, Bruce Walker; Wu, Jin
- Remote Sensing of Environment, Vol. 182
Consequences of climate change on the tree of life in Europe
journal, February 2011
- Thuiller, Wilfried; Lavergne, Sébastien; Roquet, Cristina
- Nature, Vol. 470, Issue 7335
Rate of tree carbon accumulation increases continuously with tree size
journal, January 2014
- Stephenson, N. L.; Das, A. J.; Condit, R.
- Nature, Vol. 507, Issue 7490
Amazon forests maintain consistent canopy structure and greenness during the dry season
journal, February 2014
- Morton, Douglas C.; Nagol, Jyoteshwar; Carabajal, Claudia C.
- Nature, Vol. 506, Issue 7487
A green illusion
journal, February 2014
- Soudani, Kamel; François, Christophe
- Nature, Vol. 506, Issue 7487
Effects of tropical deforestation on climate and agriculture
journal, December 2014
- Lawrence, Deborah; Vandecar, Karen
- Nature Climate Change, Vol. 5, Issue 1
Hyperdominance in Amazonian forest carbon cycling
journal, April 2015
- Fauset, Sophie; Johnson, Michelle O.; Gloor, Manuel
- Nature Communications, Vol. 6, Issue 1
A numerical model of tree aerodynamic response to a turbulent airflow
journal, July 2008
- Sellier, D.; Brunet, Y.; Fourcaud, T.
- Forestry, Vol. 81, Issue 3
An improved heat pulse method to measure low and reverse rates of sap flow in woody plants
journal, June 2001
- Burgess, S. S. O.; Adams, M. A.; Turner, N. C.
- Tree Physiology, Vol. 21, Issue 9
A noninvasive optical system for the measurement of xylem and phloem sap flow in woody plants of small stem size
journal, February 2007
- Helfter, C.; Shephard, J. D.; Martinez-Vilalta, J.
- Tree Physiology, Vol. 27, Issue 2
The Local Structure of Turbulence in Incompressible Viscous Fluid for Very Large Reynolds Numbers
journal, July 1991
- Kolmogorov, A. N.
- Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, Vol. 434, Issue 1890
Modeling the Exchanges of Energy, Water, and Carbon Between Continents and the Atmosphere
journal, January 1997
- Sellers, P. J.
- Science, Vol. 275, Issue 5299
Plant Responses to Water Stress
journal, June 1973
- Hsiao, Theodore C.
- Annual Review of Plant Physiology, Vol. 24, Issue 1
Carbon Dioxide Exchange between an Undisturbed Old-Growth Temperate Forest and the Atmosphere
journal, January 1994
- Hollinger, D. Y.; Kelliher, F. M.; Byers, J. N.
- Ecology, Vol. 75, Issue 1
New technique to measure forest floor interception – an application in a beech forest in Luxembourg
journal, January 2007
- Gerrits, A. M. J.; Savenije, H. H. G.; Hoffmann, L.
- Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, Vol. 11, Issue 2
Works referencing / citing this record:
Interception: Its Importance, its Isotopic Impact, and How to Model and Measure it
book, January 2019
- Savenije, Hubert H. G.; Coenders‐Gerrits, Miriam
- Encyclopedia of Water: Science, Technology, and Society
An architectural understanding of natural sway frequencies in trees
journal, June 2019
- Jackson, T.; Shenkin, A.; Moore, J.
- Journal of The Royal Society Interface, Vol. 16, Issue 155
In-Vivo Vibroacoustic Surveillance of Trees in the Context of the IoT
journal, March 2019
- Potamitis, Ilyas; Rigakis, Iraklis; Tatlas, Nicolaos-Alexandros
- Sensors, Vol. 19, Issue 6
A Low-Cost Chamber Prototype for Automatic Thermal Analysis of MEMS IMU Sensors in Tilt Measurements Perspective
journal, June 2019
- Ruzza, Giuseppe; Guerriero, Luigi; Revellino, Paola
- Sensors, Vol. 19, Issue 12
Tree sway of 19 Amazon trees
dataset, January 2018
- (Tim), Van Emmerik, T. H. M.; (Susan), Steele-Dunne, S. C.; (Rolf), Hut, R. W.
- TU Delft
Ideas and perspectives: Tree–atmosphere interaction responds to water-related stem variations
journal, January 2018
- van Emmerik, Tim; Steele-Dunne, Susan; Gentine, Pierre
- Biogeosciences, Vol. 15, Issue 21
Ideas and perspectives: Tree-atmosphere interaction responds to water-related stem variations
posted_content, July 2018
- van Emmerik, Tim; Steele-Dunne, Susan; Gentine, Pierre
- Biogeosciences Discussions
Thermal Compensation of Low-Cost MEMS Accelerometers for Tilt Measurements
journal, August 2018
- Ruzza, Giuseppe; Guerriero, Luigi; Revellino, Paola
- Sensors, Vol. 18, Issue 8
A Low-Cost Chamber Prototype for Automatic Thermal Analysis of MEMS IMU Sensors in Tilt Measurements Perspective
journal, June 2019
- Ruzza, Giuseppe; Guerriero, Luigi; Revellino, Paola
- Sensors, Vol. 19, Issue 12
Water stress detection using radar
text, January 2017
- Van Emmerik, T. H. M.
- Delft University of Technology