Scientists turn handheld car gadget into wildfire early-warning tool
Researchers at King's College London have converted an off-the-shelf product, usually used to determine whether car window tint is legal, into a scientific instrument that can measure leaf water content in seconds.
Scientists from King's College London and the University of Salford have repurposed a handheld device originally designed to check car window tint legality into a low-cost, handheld tool for measuring leaf water content. This new meter, costing around £140 ($190), can determine water levels in plant leaves in seconds without damaging them, in contrast to existing field instruments that can cost tens of thousands of pounds or require laboratory methods taking hours.
Leaf water content is a crucial indicator of vegetation health and its potential to ignite, making this tool valuable for wildfire prevention and agriculture. By comparing the amount of light passing through leaves at different wavelengths, the device isolates water content from the leaf's structure. Researchers validated the meter's performance across six plant species, with accuracy explaining at least 81% of the variation in leaf water content.
The device's potential applications include supporting fuel moisture monitoring for wildfire prevention and aiding irrigation decisions in agriculture, which accounts for about 70% of global freshwater use. However, the tool requires calibration for each plant species and becomes less reliable as leaves become severely desiccated.
The researchers, led by Dr. Luke Brown and Professor Mark Danson, published their findings in the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution amid the U.K.'s worst wildfire year on record, with fire chiefs confirming 2026 had already surpassed the previous record set in 2025.
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