At 17:15:13 Eastern Standard Time on Monday, May 6, the tropical forest canopy lifts and falls in the breeze. Perched high above the canopy, a new electronic eye keeps continuous watch on the forest of BCI.

For the pilot project, the Center for Tropical Forest Science/Smithsonian Institution Global Earth Observatory installed sophisticated webcams called PhenoCams on the forest dynamics monitoring plots on BCI and at Wind River (WA, USA). The camera on BCI is installed on the top of a communication tower in the middle of the island thanks to 2 km of fiber optic cable running thought the jungle. Images of the canopy collected every 30 minutes by these cameras provide information on the timing of phenological events such as leaf emergence, flowering and fruiting, and enable continuous calculation of measures such as a "greenness index". These data reveal the influences of seasonal and interannual climate variation on these forests and are valuable inputs for ecosystem models. They can also be used to ground-truth satellite data, without miles of potentially distorting atmosphere (and often clouds) between the canopy and the camera.

Contact Matteo Detto for more information about the system, or just click on the link to access the camera http://www.ctfs.si.edu/bci_cam.php