Value added - USG serves Georgia [Apr. 2008]

VALUE ADDED: USG Serves Georgia

April 2008

Ossabaw Island: Cameras Soon to Provide Window for Classrooms

Ossabaw Island on the Georgia coast just south of Savannah is an undeveloped paradise inhabited by wild animals and inaccessible to the general public.

Several organizations including the Georgia

Research Alliance, which has contributed

$100,000 are working to put Ossabaw's

natural resources

to work without

disturbing this

patch of land that

time forgot. This is

an ambitious effort

that centers on the

use of broadband

technology to

bring the barrier

prediction, are available at

island's unique

www.georgiaweather.net. The

environment into

next phase of the project will

focus in classrooms

measure water quality at a

and households

series of wells, Bitler said, and

across the nation. Skidaway Institute of Oceanography Professor Emeritus that element eventually will be

The plan is to put sensors and cameras at key

Herb Windom (right) discusses the Ossabaw sensor expanded to track water depth,

network with reporters while Ossabaw Island Manager salinity and other variables.

Jim Bitler (left) assists.

After that? The island's

locations around

alligator, turtle and bird popu-

Ossabaw to create a network that would

lations are obvious targets for cameras. Windom

churn out real-time information continuously, said 12 or so cameras will be placed on slender

according to Herbert L Windom, professor

poles, much like telephone poles, making them

emeritus at the Skidaway Institute of Oceano-

unobtrusive yet functional.

graphy and one of the originators of the concept. "We need to keep it as natural as possible," he

Part of the initiative is in place.

said.

A weather station, funded by Georgia Power, has been up and running for some time, said Jim Bitler, on-island coordinator for the Ossabaw Island Foundation. The data it produces, which include current conditions, a rainfall calculator and temperature and dewpoint

Bitler added that whatever system is installed must operate under the mandate established in 1978 when the state bought the island from the two families who owned it: Ossabaw is to be
See "OSSABAW," p. 2...

VALUE ADDED USG Serves Georgia

Ossabaw Island Going Online
Continued from p. 1 ...

used solely for study, research and education, with minimal impact on its resources.

Bitler one of the few full-time

residents of the island, which is

managed by the state and accessible

only by boat said installing the

poles and sensors at sea-turtle

nesting sites along the beach would

enable scientists and students

to monitor the nesting process,

as well as possibly monitor nest

depredation. Meanwhile, a camera

trained on an alligator nest would

provide a good look at daily life in

that environment.

The process of placing the sensors One of thousands of reptilian inhabitants of Ossabaw Island whose daily ac-

is expected to take place over the tivities will be observed and studied with the help of inobtrusive cameras and

next several months.

sensors.

Once they are installed and the information is made available, the impact will be broad and immediate, said Paul Pressly, director of the Ossabaw Island Education Alliance, a partnership in which the Board of Regents is the

"We want the information coming from the sensors, video cameras and other monitors to go into every classroom in the state of Georgia," he said. "We have the opportunity of redefining how coastal ecology is taught in this state." Q

driving force.