Towards achieving long-lifespan and self-sustained monitoring of coastal environments

Coastal regions are vital to human beings. However, the marine habitats distributed along the 159,000km U.S. shoreline are subject to increasing stressors from both landside and seaward directions. To better understand these problems, new techniques and methods are needed to build large-scale, long-term, high-resolution, and self-sustained in-situ 3-D coastal monitoring systems. This paper discusses three key techniques: integrated microsensors for low-power and high-resolution monitoring of water quality parameters, biomass-based underwater energy harvesting for self-sustained sensor operation, and power management schemes between renewable energy sources and sensor devices. The synergism of these techniques is able to transform the way in which we observe and understand the sustainability vulnerable coastal environments and the fragile ecosystems they host.