EcoSentinel: Towards a techno natural internet of things approach for large scale sustainable remote monitoring of soil and wilderness

Abstract

Monitoring soil and wilderness is essential for environmental sustainability, biodiversity conservation, and climate resilience. Healthy soils support carbon sequestration, regulate water cycles, and sustain ecosystems, while wild environments play a crucial role in preserving biodiversity and mitigating climate change. Current approaches to continuous monitoring of land degradation, soil quality, or ecosystem shifts consist of manual observation and measurement of the environmental conditions, which are limited to the availability of human resources and the dimensions of the area to be measured. Also, current automatic solutions aimed to augment human capabilities—ranging from satellite observation to in-field wireless sensor networks—stem from challenges in terms of power supply, data transmission, sensor durability, scalability, and integration with natural systems. The purpose of this paper is to propose EcoSentinel: a Techno-Natural Internet of Things (IoT) approach specifically designed for large-scale, sustainable remote monitoring of soil and wilderness. By leveraging the biological processes and resilience of plants, EcoSentinel aims to enable them to function as self-sustained digital nodes within a wireless network. This is achieved through energy harvesting from plant microbial fuel cells and electromagnetic signal propagation through the plants’ leaves, allowing plants to autonomously sense and transmit environmental data. This plantbased IoT system introduces a new paradigm of plant-plant cybernetic interaction, digitally transforming natural ecosystems. This paper presents the theoretical foundations, system architecture, and potential applications of EcoSentinel, paving the way for a new era of bio-integrated environmental monitoring IoT technologies.