SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. — Imagine a bird's eye-view of Tahoe on a sunny summer day — a wide expanse of blue speckled with boats.

Imagine that same view, but over an area of stream-zone restoration as it morphs over time.

Now imagine how the view would look in the case of a catastrophic wildfire, watching how the speed and direction of the wind influences the flames' path.

Scientist have tried for years to find funding for a high-speed network of sensors and cameras to monitor the basin. Through a recent partnership with a Sony Europe and a group of middle school students from Meadow Vista, Calif., that technology is now a reality.

“We are excited about a future for Tahoe where Tahoe can get the best technology to study it and to protect it,” said Graham Kent, director of University of Nevada, Reno, Nevada Seismological Laboratory.

On Tuesday, scientists from UNR and the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center installed the first camera prototype in Tahoe City. A live stream from the 360-degree, solar-powered camera and wi-fi system is set to debut next week via the Internet from Copenhagen, Denmark, during the United Nations Climate Change Conference.

From the minds of middle schoolers

While scientists from TERC and UNR looked to secure funding for a lake-wide monitoring system, Independent Home Study School students from Meadow Vista entered and won the international Climate Actions portion of the global First Lego League Children's Climate Call competition in Copenhagen. The team's idea to use constant monitoring of forest fires with cameras and social networking impressed Sony executives, who decided to produce the technology, according to a Sony release.

At that time, the students' teacher, Heidi Buck, and Kent got in touch and found common ground between the students' project and Tahoe's science needs.

The Tahoe City camera is a prototype and will stay at its location until four permanent locations around the basin can be identified for that camera and three others.

The cameras are provided by Sony free of charge, and the scientists involved are donating their time, said Geoffrey Schladow, TERC director.

Watching the skies

The First Lego team's goal for the project is to monitor Tahoe forests for signs of forest fire by broadcasting the live stream to a public Web site. There, people can look at the video and click areas to report a forest fire. The information might also be available as a screen saver.

The Web site is still being built, Kent said.

Scientists can also use the images combined with weather information to help fire fighters determine the trajectory of the fire.

“If there is a fire, then all the cameras can be trained on it, and we can see where the fire is and how quickly it is progressing,” Schladow said. “It really can save lives.”

Monitoring Tahoe

The technology can also be used for a host of other research purposes.

With a high-speed broadband connection, researchers can program their equipment to report data in real-time that can be monitored remotely, Schladow said.

Researchers can also use the photos to monitor the number of boats on the water and to aid with aquatic invasive species research, Kent said. The cameras can be used to produce time-lapse videos of stream-zone sensitive areas that have been restored, to discover how the area changes over time, Kent said.

“This type of information could be meaningful to us in discussing land use policy,” said Shane Romsos, Tahoe Regional Planning Agency science monitoring and evaluation program manager.