- A team of Egyptian students was among five from Africa shortlisted for this year’s Earth Prize, which recognizes the efforts of 13- to 19-year-olds offering innovative solutions to pressing environmental challenges.
- The “TerraSkipper” robot they designed is inspired by the real mudskipper fish, with a body and feet that “skip” through wet, salty and degraded farmland, collecting data on soil conditions like salinity and pH levels.
- The goal is not only to build the prototype, “but to contribute to a smarter and more responsive way of protecting our planet,” 16-year-old Mustafa Mohammed, one of the team members, told Mongabay.
Mudskippers are amphibious fish that can live both in water and on land. Usually found in muddy landscapes, the big-eyed creatures dig tunnels through the mud with their mouths, wrapping themselves in air pockets to maintain healthy levels of oxygen.
A group of Egyptian boarding school students from Giza in the Greater Cairo region found inspiration in this animal — which is found far away from urban Giza in the mangrove areas and mudflats off Egypt’s Red Sea coast— and designed a small robot that could help tackle one of the most pressing challenges Egyptian farmers currently face.
Combining robotics with environmental science, the students developed the “TerraSkipper” robot. Its design is inspired by the real mudskipper, with a body and feet that “skip” through wet, salty and degraded farmland, collecting data on soil conditions like salinity and pH levels.
The team was among five from Africa shortlisted for this year’s Earth Prize, which recognizes the efforts of 13- to19-year-olds offering innovative solutions to pressing environmental challenges.
“We have seen that farmers are struggling with the increasing soil salinity and the variety in the pH [levels] in the soil,” one of the students, 16-year-old Mustafa Mohammed, told Mongabay by phone.
The Nile Delta, where the River Nile meets the Mediterranean Sea, is densely populated and home to 40% of Egypt’s population. It has been flagged by the United Nations as one of the world’s hotspots for climate change-related sea level rise.
As sea levels rise, soils are becoming more saline as seawater intrudes inland and becomes oversaturated with seawater. High pH levels and greater salinity are a major cause of land degradation. Coastal erosion following the construction of the Aswan High Dam on the Nile River in the 1970s also contributed to degradation across the Nile Delta.
The information TerraSkipper collects can be visualized via an app. The idea is that it would help farmers get a better understanding of their soil conditions and make better decisions about what to plant, where.
Another version of the TerraSkipper, Mohammed said, has an integrated seed dispersal system: “If it detects that the soil is highly saline, it can release seeds that are more tolerant of salt and suitable for that environment,” said Ziad Kotb, 17, who is part of the team.
Kotb added that the intention is that it is practical for farmers to use but also useful for scientists, researchers and environmental teams for monitoring and restoration purposes, “especially in areas that are difficult to access, like swamps or degraded lands.”
The team has a prototype in the testing phase. Mohammed said their goal is not only to build the prototype, “but to contribute to a smarter and more responsive way of protecting our planet.”
The team from Egypt was selected, among other reasons, for the biomimicry approach it applied, said Charlotte Tucker, who handles communications for the Earth Foundation, as well as for “it’s clear applicability in addressing soil degradation in the Nile Delta, and its strong potential to scale to similar environments globally.”
“It combines technical creativity with a practical, low-impact solution for sustainable agriculture,” Tucker said.
Banner image: A mudskipper with turquoise spots, Indonesia. Photo by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
FEEDBACK: Use this form to send a message to the author of this post. If you want to post a public comment, you can do that at the bottom of the page.
Credits
