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Initial development and testing of the InteleSense technology was done in an extremely rugged and biologically rich region of North Kauai. The test zone included the four ancient ahupua’a of Waipa, Lumahai, Wainiha, and Haena (also known as Limahuli Valley). In ancient Hawaii, ahupua’a were socioecological land units within which an attempt was made to temper human resource use with a holistic understanding of the interconnectedness of terrestrial, freshwater, and marine ecosystems. The boundaries of the four ahupua’a in our North Kauai Project area generally align geographically with steep-walled valleys within which drainage streams flow to the ocean from high rainfall zones located above 1219 m (4000 ft) elevation in the interior of Kauai’s central extinct volcano, Mt. Waialeale. One of wettest spots on earth, with recorded rainfall of over 600 inches per year, this extremely rugged landscape presents a worst case scenario for deploying RF-based networks of self-powered electronic sensors dependent upon line-of-sight transmission and solar power.
While our initial deployment zone was in unmanaged land on the northern end of Kauai, we have now also deployed our technology in a number of new regions on the islands. We recently established a site on the southern shore of Kauai with the National Tropical Botanical Garden at Lawai as part of a conservation and education/outreach project. Further, we established a deployment working with the Maui Land and Pineapple Company for use of the system for agricultural monitoring and preservation in a managed land region. Finally, for research and educational purposes, we also established a small testbed site on Oahu at UH campus in Manoa near Honolulu in an urban setting.