Sensor networks measuring correlated data are considered, where the task is to gather data from the network nodes to a sink. A specific scenario is addressed, where data at nodes are lossy coded with high-resolution, and the information measured by the nodes has to be reconstructed at the sink within both certain total and individual distortion bounds. The first problem considered is to find the optimal transmission structure and the rate-distortion allocations at the various spatially located nodes, such as to minimize the total power consumption cost of the network, by assuming fixed nodes positions. The optimal transmission structure is the shortest path tree and the problems of rate and distortion allocation separate in the high-resolution case, namely, first the distortion allocation is found as a function of the transmission structure, and second, for a given distortion allocation, the rate allocation is computed. The second problem addressed is the case when the node positions can be chosen, by finding the optimal node placement for two different targets of interest, namely total power minimization and network lifetime maximization. Finally, a node placement solution that provides a tradeoff between the two metrics is proposed.