Quasi-Real-Time Monitoring of a Citrus Field in Nabeul and Joumine Dam in Tunisia

Abstract

The management of remote natural resources, e.g., land and water resources, requires frequent visits to these sites which could be costly in time and resources. Telemetry technologies help monitoring, observing and analyzing data at a distance; they use advanced information and communication protocols and have been applied to different applications including agricultural fields. The objective of this study was to evaluate the performance of a new telemetry technology, a field network system, to remotely monitoring natural resources (a citrus grove in the governorate of Nabeul and the dam of Joumine in the governorate of Bizerte) in Tunisia. The field network system, installed in these two remote locations and powered with solar panels, run well during the test periods. Although the system sent data daily, data transfer stability was a challenge that should be further studied and improved. The manuscript further reports on the quantitative and qualitative performance of the system in Tunisia. Overall, the field network system is a tool that could be used for different applications by researchers, agricultural producers, water resources managers, and policy makers.