Joo, W., S.H. Gage, S. Biswas
Presented at the All Scientist Poster Reception (2007-05-14 to 2007-05-14 )
Communication is a fundamental sense of the animal world comprising of both the emission and capture of acoustics. Sounds are used in ecology to census organisms (birds, amphibians, mammals). Signatures of sounds of human activities and ecological communications can be identified. A framework for the study and understanding of patch-level acoustic signals from a landscape is presented. This framework includes
- a) a taxonomy of the biological and physical characteristics of a soundscape,
- b) an analytical approach to quantify the components of an acoustic sample taken from the environment,
- c) a protocol for measurement of acoustic signals in the environment,
- d) a cyber-infrastructure necessary to manage numerous acoustic signals sampled from different environments, and
- e) a web tool to present acoustic information in nearreal time from different places at different times. Our research has produced methods to characterize acoustics in human dominated ecosystems. Our findings are in three areas: soundscape classification; measurement of diurnal patterns of acoustics, and the development of indices relating human and biophysical acoustics.