Data Logger | Mike Bell & Catrina James
📷 Photos by Shuoyang Zheng and Michael Bell. Videos by Shuoyang Zheng
We use data loggers like this to measure a range of environmental variables that help us to understand the carbon balance of the forest. Here, we are measuring air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, photosynthetically active radiation, net radiation and carbon dioxide concentration. The system is powered by a solar panel, and data is sent via a cellular modem to an online server that the artists can access.
Mike Bell is Climate Scientist at Forest Research and a Co-Investigator of the Sensing the Forest project. Mike supports research at the Straits Inclosure long-term carbon dioxide flux monitoring site, helping to maintain sensors and data acquisition systems. As well as this, he is involved with routine data collection for the Environmental Change Network site and the ICP forests “Level II” programme. For both of these programmes, he is responsible for running the associated automated weather stations at Forest Research sites. Mike joined Forest Research as an Environmental Research Assistant in the Climate Change group in 2018 after obtaining a PhD in Environmental Science from the University of Reading. His PhD research focussed on the ecohydrology of blanket peatlands and their sensitivity to climate change.