It is difficult to spot pollution, lead for example, in a clear stream with the naked eye. Unless you focus on a limnea, an aquatic snail. In contact with the poison, the animal, already slow, will quickly decrease its movement rate. And for those who know how to observe it, the drooling lookout will give the alert
This idea of using “sentinel” species to monitor pollution but also the impacts of global warming, as surely as a satellite warns of a hurricane, is at the heart of the project. Econect launched by six research laboratories and three Toulouse start-ups *.
Connected flowers to test the “intelligence” of bees
The objective is to deploy for two years and on twelve sites – from the Gers to Ariège, via the Rangueil scientific campus, in the Pink City – three different species: The limneas therefore, but also bees and chickadees. . The snails will evolve in cages, immersed in water and filmed continuously. The bees will live in connected hives.
“In the event of pollution, if fewer of them enter, the bee counter will tell us in real time what a beekeeper could take a fortnight to notice”, assures Arnaud Elger, ecologist of the Functional Ecology and Environment Laboratory ( CNRS-INP, Université Toulouse 3) and responsible for the Econect project.
Razor-sharp algorithms in environmental Big data
The cognitive capacities of bees and chickadees, likely to be affected by environmental changes, will also be monitored. The foragers will measure themselves, for example, against the connected flowers of the start-up BeeGuard, vicious with their scents and sweet reward systems. The same goes for chickadees, ringed with an RFID system, but with color-coded electronic feeders. Once the sentinel network is deployed, the sensors connected, the flowers planted, each listless snail, each stray bee, each dumber than average bird will send a signal to the project server. The algorithms will run at the end of the chain, generating instant pollution alerts in a new “environmental big data”.
“By creating this automated environmental observatory, we first want to prove the concept,” assures Arnaud Elger. The final objective is to develop a real-time pollution alert system, based on the stress response of living organisms ”.
By choosing sites at different altitudes, the twenty or so researchers on board Econect will also save precious time on studying the effects of global warming on wildlife.
* Beeguard, Selct Design and Addict Solutions