Nature-o-Sense

Nature-o-Sense

Soil is the foundation of our life. However, agriculture, deforestation, and other factors are degrading and eroding topsoil at alarming rates. Globally, 52% of agricultural land is already degraded. The planet is in crisis. 

Eighty-seven percent of life forms on this planet – microbes, worms, insects, birds, animals, human beings, plants, trees and every other vegetation on the planet is sustained by an average of thirty-nine inches of topsoil. And that is in grave danger right now. In the last forty years, forty percent of the world’s topsoil has been lost. The United Nations says we have soil left only for approximately eighty to hundred harvests, which means another forty-five to sixty years of agriculture. After that, we will not have the soil to produce food. You can imagine the suffering that we will unfold in the world. Thirty percent of India’s land is already degraded, and 90% of India’s states are seeing soil turn to desert. That means nothing can be cultivated there. So, protecting the soil for the future generations of this land is the most important issue to be resolved at this hour. 

Lack of organic content turns soil into sand, leading to food crisis, water scarcity, loss of biodiversity, climate change, loss of livelihood and migration. If current rates of soil degradation continue, this would be the end of life as we know it.

India is rich in water resources, with a network of rivers and the snow cover of the Himalayas, which can meet the country's varying water needs. However, with the country's rapid population growth and the need to meet increasing demands for irrigation, human and industrial consumption, available water resources are being depleted in many parts of the country and water quality is deteriorating.

In fact, no aspect of the ecosystem works in isolation, so it would be a mistake to think that every aspect of the environment can be addressed without addressing the environment as a whole. Until we realize that life is a single, intricate phenomena that is occurring simultaneously, no solution is complete. In many ways, Soil and Water are the underlying platform upon which life springs forth. If we fix them, we have the best chance of fixing the whole.



Hence it is becoming increasingly important to measure soil and water quality so that measures can be taken to curb their deterioration and to make the best out of the limited quantity that we have. 

Therefore we have made two independent projects— Soil Quality Monitoring and Water Quality Monitoring— that can monitor the health of soil and water respectively so measures can be taken to limit further degradation.

1. Soil Quality Monitoring (aka AgroSense)

With this project we intend to measure various soil quality parameters such as pH, Electrical Conductivity, Temperature, Moisture, NPK content (Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium based fertilizer content). The hardware unit (Robot) of the project measures these parameters. The robot then sends over the data to the cloud which is then compared to standard values of respective parameters of the given crop. It is then analyzed with the software part to provide insights that help to improve soil health and result in a higher yield. 

2. Water Quality Monitoring

With this system we intend to measure various water quality parameters such as pH, Turbidity, TDS, Temperature(and more sensors be added). This is measured by the hardware unit of the project. Many such hardware units are deployed on a large water body to continuously monitor its quality. The software collects the reading and stores it in a database. The database can then be accessed to predict any anomalous behavior using Machine Learning and hence give an advanced warning.

I. Water Quality Monitoring

Tools:

• Sensors: pH, TDS, turbidity, temperature
• Breadboard
• Jumper wires
• ESP32
• Cloud storage
• Data storing devices

Technologies:

• AWS
• Figma
• React Js
• IoT

II. Soil Quality Monitoring

Tools:

• Sensors- soil moisture, temperature, humidity, light, pressure, GPS.
• Jumper wires
• ESP32
• Cloud storage
• Database
• Breadboard

Technologies:

• AWS
• Figma
• IoT
• React Js

The ESP32 collects sensor data and transmits it to the cloud. These hardware units may be mounted on a ROV (Remotely Operated Vehicle) such as rovers, boats or even submarines to get the data as required. We are using AWS IoT for getting data from ESP32 using MQTT protocol. A DynamoDB database is subscribed to the incoming data topic and stores the data. This data is then displayed on the website. Furthermore, the data is analyzed and compared with standard values to give useful suggestions to improve the soil or water quality respectively.

Below are the various applications of Nature-o-Sense:

1. Home Drinking Water: Quality of water supplied by corporation or water filters can be checked in real time so as to be sure if it is fit for drinking or various other domestic purposes.

2. Rivers, Lakes, Ponds: A network of such water quality monitoring nodes can be fixated that are connected to each other and can help keep track of pollution and identify the point sources of water pollution in the water body in real time.

3. Industrial Water Testing: Water Quality Monitoring can be used to quickly check if the water used as a raw material for that particular industry is fit to their requirement or not.

4. General Soil Quality Monitoring: Soil Quality Monitoring can be used to check if the land/soil is suitable for the purpose of the end user or not by measuring various parameters of soil quality in real time and comparing the measured values with the standard ones to reach a conclusion.

5. Agriculture: Plants grown in a glasshouse require regulated climatic conditions which can be monitored by Soil Quality Monitoring so that the environment can be controlled according to the plant's specific environmental needs.

6. Renewal of Barren Land: The rejuvenation of barren land follows intense manuring and mulching practices over a long period of time in order to make the soil fertile again. This process may take as long as a year. Therefore Soil Quality Monitoring is essential to asses the quality of soil at different stages of rejuvenation to provide an idea as to how much of a difference is created in the soil.

Here you can see some data analysis of the collected data to gain useful insights.

Now that we have made a system that can report water or soil quality parameters. We can bring it into actual use by installing it on various ROVs from ArduPilot. This would be especially useful when sensors are expensive and want to cover many points of a given area.

We can also make a reporting station in case of monitoring a large rivers, because of the strong flow of water, it may not be possible to traverse it using a ROV. And then connect them to one another in a LoRaWAN network and the central unit reports all the values.

Thank you for reading this instructable!