Preventing forest fires with tree power

Source: MIT
Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have literally tapped into the tiny electrical current carried in trees and created a company, Voltree, to capitalize on it as a power source. People have known about this phenomenon for many years and have tried to explain it by various exotic mechanisms, said Andreas Mershin, a postdoctoral researcher at MIT who is involved in the research. "But the cause of it is a simple pH difference between the tree and the soil," said Chris Love, a senior in chemistry at MIT and Vice President of Voltree. Working with the U.S. Forest Service, Voltree has created cheap sensors that use tree power to monitor temperature and humidity conditions inside forests. The goal is to give forest managers and firefighters better tools to predict and monitor fires."