Heron Island Automated Marine Weather And Oceanographic Station

Sensor network infrastructure was installed at Heron Island in the southern Great Barrier Reef off Gladstone, Australia. The infrastructure consists of a base station mounted on the existing communications tower, a number of network relay poles installed in the lagoon and a number of buoys which carry the actual sensors.The initial design is to monitor the flow of water through the lagoon which is often 'ponded' due to the high coral rim to the lagoon, this creates complex in and out flows and flushing of the lagoon system.The deployment in August 2008 consisted of the base station using the Telstra nextG service, six 6m relay poles located in the lagoon and five sensor floats also located in the lagoon. The poles carry one bottom thermistor, the floats currently have surface thermistors only. Additional instrumentation will be added by the end of 2008.The project looks to deploy sensor networks at seven sites along the Great Barrier Reef to measure a range of physical parameters at a range of scales. The project will install communications, data and platform infrastructure that will support future sensor work looking at biological and chemical parameters.This project is part of the Wireless Sensor Networks Facility (formerly known as Facility for The Automated Intelligent Monitoring of Marine Systems (FAIMMS)), part of the Great Barrier Reef Ocean Observing System project (GBROOS) (IMOS)