A Non-Destructive Measurement of Trunk Moisture Content in Living Trees Based on Multi-Sensory Data Fusion

Abstract

Water plays an important role in various physiological activities of living trees. Measuring trunk moisture content (MC) in real-time without damage has important guiding significance for transpiration research in forest ecosystems. However, existing standing tree MC detection methods are either too cumbersome to install or cause different degrees of damage. Here, we propose a novel Internet of Things (IoT) monitoring system that includes wireless acoustic emission sensor nodes (WASNs) and underground soil MC sensor nodes to efficiently detect and diagnose the MC level of living tree trunks. After the characteristic parameters were collected by the two sensors, a feature selection and multi-sensory global fusion method for MC diagnosis was designed and developed and several statistical parameters were selected as the input variables to predict the heartwood MC level with a support vector machine (SVM) model. Moreover, to achieve the highest prediction accuracy, an improved sparrow search algorithm (ISSA) is applied to ensure the most suitable parameter combinations in a two-objective optimization model. Extensive experiments result in a fusion of the environment, and AE signals show that the proposed mechanism has better diagnostic performance than state-of-the-art methods and is more adaptable to the fluctuation of working conditions.

Electrical Properties at Multi Frequencies for Analysis of Physical and Anatomical Properties of Fast-Growing Standing Teak Trees at Various Ages

“…This is because water has a lower density compared to the wood fibers themselves. Therefore, as the moisture content of the wood decreases, its density increases [16,41].…”

“…Some studies revealed the existence of electrical properties potentials in trees that could be related to physiological processes in trees [15,16]. The tree electrical properties approach is also used to determine the quality of trees for sawlogs and breeding programs [17][18][19][20].…”

Electrical Properties at Multi-Frequencies for Analysis of Physical and Anatomical Properties of Fast-Growing Standing Teak Trees at Various Ages

“…Some studies have revealed the existence of electrical property potentials in trees that could be related to their physiological processes [12,13]. The tree electrical property approach is also used to determine the quality of trees for saw logs and breeding programs [14,15].…”