Transicon completes major upgrade of Amazon climate research site – with the help of Pokémon

A unique control system developed by UK engineering firm Transicon to monitor climate change has been switched on in the Amazon rainforest, with its research arrays named after Pokémon characters to help scientists navigate the facility set up

The milestone marks the completion of a major international upgrade of two out of three globally significant forest climate change research sites.

Engineers working for Transicon, an automation and control specialist, completed the final stages of the project for Birmingham Institute of Forest Research (BIFoR) remotely from the company’s West Midlands headquarters.

The sophisticated industrial control system which is designed to manage a network of arrays – a cluster of experimental equipment including valves, gas analysers, wind sensors and other instruments used to study the impact of rising CO2 levels on mature trees – was originally built for the Free-Air Carbon Dioxide Enrichment (FACE) experiment run by BIFoR in a Staffordshire woodland.

Data extracted from the experiment site is shared globally to help build the models that inform international climate policy.

Its success in the UK led to the control system, built around a package of Siemens technologies, being deployed to upgrade the second FACE site north of Manaus, Brazil.

Engineers from Transicon and BiFOR travelled to the Amazon earlier this year to help install the equipment, with the final arrays then commissioned remotely — connecting a rainforest site thousands of miles away to a control room in Telford.

Each array has been given its own identity by the Transicon team to help researchers identify at a glance which area of the woodland is being monitored.

In the UK, the arrays are named after Star Wars characters, while the Amazon arrays take their names from Pokémon including fan favourites Squirtle and Blastoise. As each array comes online, an on-screen silhouette resolves into its named character.

Jennifer Hughes, General Manager at Transicon, said: “The Amazon upgrade centres on a new state-of-the art CO2 delivery and control system which we first developed for the Staffordshire FACE project.

“Our original solution was designed and developed to provide a blueprint for reliable, consistent experimental control systems so the fact it has now been implemented across the other side of the world to support vital research in the Amazon rainforest is absolutely fantastic. It just shows how far the system and technology can be trusted to perform, wherever in the world it is needed.

“The new system replaces bespoke legacy components with industry-standard platforms which makes real-time monitoring much easier and more accurate for researchers working on this globally significant project.

“Bringing the arrays to life with Pokémon characters was an added fun element designed by our engineers, but it is actually a really useful way for researchers to be able to clearly identify which array they are looking at and drawing data from.”

Dr Kris Hart at The Birmingham Institute of Forest Research said: “The Transicon team has transformed our research capabilities with their innovative approach to modernising our control systems.

“Their expertise in designing and developing a system which we could implement across multiple research sites has been invaluable. This latest upgrade will significantly enhance our global research capacity to understand how forests in the Amazon respond to rising atmospheric CO2.

“This work demonstrates how innovation in automation and digitalisation is not just benefiting industries like manufacturing and engineering but also playing a huge role in the environmental sector.

FACE experiments expose forests to the carbon dioxide levels expected by 2050 to understand how they will react. The Amazon deployment has been supported by the Met Office and funded by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office.