Take a look at the article on the Wired Woodlands. It is a small forested reserve up in the San Jacinto Mountains in southern California. The James Reserve is owned by the University of California at Riverside. It is now covered with “more than 100 tiny sensors, robots, cameras and computers, which are beginning to paint an unusually detailed portrait” of innumerable processes in the natural landscape, from nesting behaviour to soil chemistry.
I’ve been to the James Reserve several times because it is the natural home of the Society for Conservation GIS (well, ok, it’s not home but it’s the site of the original meetings of the group). I remember how exciting it was when the director of the reserve got word that he won this major National Science Foundation Grant. This represents a major innovation in the use of computers to monitor the environment.