Soundscape Ecology
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Soundscape Ecology “Over increasingly large areas of the United States, spring now comes unheralded by the return of the birds, and the early mornings are strangely silent where once they were filled with the beauty of bird song.” Rachel Carson – The Silent Spring 1962 Dr. Bryan Pijanowski Department of Forestry & Natural Resources Overview 1. What is a soundscape? 2. Play example soundscapes (5-8 recordings) 3. Describe how we measure soundscapes 4. Summarize some of our research surrounding Purdue University 5. Describe the role of engineers in research like this 1. WHAT IS A SOUNDSCAPE? Biophony – sounds created by biological Soundscapes organisms, mostly insects, amphibians, birds and mammals. Signals carry information and are thus complex. Geophony – sounds from the movement of wind and water. Driven mostly by climate. Running streams, rain and wind. Anthrophony – sounds by human-made objects such as machines, friction from road noise, bells, sirens. Definitions of Soundscapes • R. Murray Schafer (1994): “the soundscape is any acoustic field of study… We can isolate an acoustic environment as a field of study just as we can study the characteristics of a given landscape. However, it is less easy to formulate an exact impression of a soundscape than of a landscape” (p. 7). • Bernie Krause (1987, 2002): all of the sounds (biophony, geophony and anthrophony) present in an environment at a given time, soundscape as a finite resource-competing for spectral space (acoustic niche hypothesis). What it is not • Bioacoustics: traditionally focused on species specific traits or a single group of organisms – this is a 70 year old field of study • Noise research: examining how noise is created in human-dominated areas 2. SOUNDSCAPE EXAMPLES Wildlife Area, West of Campus, Midnight, Spring 2009 (Pijanowski) Madagascar, Dawn Chorus (Krause) Congo, Nighttime (Krause) Purdue Evening, Urban Soundscape (Pijanowski) “Tiny” Soundscape (Krause) 3. HOW WE MEASURE SOUNDSCAPES Computerized acoustic sensors that are set to record 15 mins at the start of every hour Illustration of a complex dawn chorus (Madagascar) Frequency Time (30 secs total) 4. RESEARCH SURROUNDING PURDUE Acoustic Sensor Locations and Land Use (c) Land Use/Cover within 100m Pijanowski et al, in press. Bioscience. (c) Land Use/Cover within 1km percent (a) Length of Roads (by type, in meters) within 1km of recorder Measure of Acoustic Frequency Evenness Gini Coefficient definition Measures evenness across equal sized categories Uses area under Lorentz curve (ordered cumulative distributions) Gini coefficient values = 1 (all sounds are from one frequency band) =0 (all sounds are equally distributed across all frequency bands) Step 1 – Import WAV file to GIS Sound Patch Analysis Step 4 – Convert to shape file and calculate geometry (area) Step 2 – Threshold map based on dB Step 5 – Histogram of area (for one 15 recording) 0.0 10,000 Proportion per Bar per Proportion Step 3 – Filter binary map using majority 1,000 100 Count 10 1 1 10 100 1,000 AREA Spectrograph as a Unit of Analysis Purdue Wildlife (Wetland) Area, April 7, 2008 frequency frequency frequency frequency Time (15 mins) Time (15 mins) Rhythms of Nature Peak Dusk Chorus Dawn Chorus Peak and trough Differential Amax-Amin = 0.23 Trough Acoustic FrequencyAcoustic Diversity Hour Frequency Band Entropy Averaged By Hour and Site 5. LA SELVA WORK 40m 20m 2m over Waveforms and Spectrograms for 10 sec recordings at La Selva (near SOR350) over river 20m from river edge 2m from edge 40m from river edge Design Database Management Systems (this one stores over 20 TB of data!) http://1159sequoia05.fnr.purdue.edu/tippecanoe/ http://1159sequoia05.fnr.purdue.edu/laselva/ Special issue in Landscape Ecology (October 2011 issue) Truax and Barrett. Foreword to the special issue Pijanowski and Farina. Introduction to the special issue Pijanowski et al. What is soundscape ecology? Barber et al. Modeling noise in National Parks Francis et al. Nesting success of birds in noisy environments Elda et al. National Park Service soundscape management plans Dumyahn and Pijanowski. Managing soundscapes as common pool resources Dumyahn and Pijanowski. Soundscape conservation Villanueva-Rivera et al. A primer of acoustics for ecologists Global Sustainable Soundscape Network Research Coordination Network 52 founding members (North America, Europe and Australia) ecologists psychoacousticians environmental engineers musicians part of acoustic ecology Activities visit 8 ecosystems (Alaska, desert, Borneo, Tuscanny, northern lakes, jungle) share data develop standards Theme Teams recording standards analysis and tools data management policy and management engage the public David Monacchi – Italian Soundscape Composer (Artist and Sound Engineer) Ambisonic instrumentation http://www.davidmonacchi.it/indiceen.htm Design a better acoustic sensor Need sensors that can (1) withstand harsh environments (2) record a long time with the need for artificial power (3) transmit acoustic data via wireless communication (4) set up in sensor networks (1000s of acoustic sensors synchronized) (5) integrate other sensors (temperature, precipitation, humidity, wind speed, wind direction, soil moisture, surface albedo) Collect and Process Remote Sensing Data to Characterize Landscapes Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR) • Active remote sensing • Range (Laser) + Location (GPS) + Attitude (IMU) = 3D coordinates of surface 2006 LIDAR Data Acquisition Dr. P in Costa Rica (Oct. 2010) For further information Dr. Bryan Pijanowski 305 FORS Building Department of Forestry and Natural Resources [email protected] • Acknowledgements –Discovery Park Center for the Environment and the Department of Forestry and Natural Resources for funding –College of Agriculture and Department of Forestry and Natural Resources –Stuart Gage and Bernie Krause –Melba Crawford, Jinha Jung and Luis Villanueva-Rivera.