CBSS launches environmental monitoring station
The Centre for Basic Space Science (CBSS), Nsukka, has launched a unique environmental monitoring station, which is expected to greatly facilitate research, and save Nigeria millions in foreign exchange.
CBSS scientists and engineers commissioned the indigenously designed instrument last Wednesday, in a low keyed ceremony at the centre’s permanent site, in Eburumirin community.
Professor F.E. Opara, CBSS director, told The Guardian that “the Environmental, Pollution and Soil monitoring (EPSm) instrument was “the only one of its kind in Africa”.
“Its operational capacity, is too extensive to treat exhaustively,” he said, in a telephone interview. “But EPSm can measure 13 important variables, which impinge on scientific research and social policy.
“Some of the variables,” he continued, “are soil conditions, humidity, solar radiation, atmospheric pressure, temperature and aerosols”.
Opara noted that engineers in the Instrumentation Division of the National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA), based at CBSS, had taken six months to develop EPSm.
“We embarked on the project,” he explained, “to meet Nigeria’s needs. There is no indigenous manufacturer; and the instruments are too expensive to import.
“But even when you can find a device that is affordable,” continued Opara, “it cannot do all the things our instrument can do”.
He said the next step, was to seek a patent for the solar powered station, whose design and construction was carried out in the Centre’s own engineering laboratory and workshop.
In a separate interview, Lanre Daniyan, Head of the Instrumentation Division at the Centre, lauded EPSm as “a succor to Nigerian research community”.
He described the instrument as “a one-stop facility for a wide scenario of environmental measurements,” and postulated that it would impact several crucial research and policy areas.
His list includes atmospheric investigations which, he asserted, would be “virtually impossible” without the station, as well as radio wave propagation studies—equally environmentally sensitive.
Averred Daniyan, “You also can’t do any research in the areas of solar energy or renewable energy generally, without such an instrument, to measure the amount of global radiation from the Sun”.
Opara, on his part, said CBSS would partner with research institutes in Nigeria and within the West African sub-region, to “remedy the dearth of these kinds of monitoring facilities”.
The director said further, that CBSS would also involve the International Astronomical Union (IAU), since EPSm is used for setting up radio observatories—and Nigeria is now IAU’s outlet in the sub-region.
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Nice work!
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