HackSpace – September 2019

SPARK

Soundscapes

to

Landscapes

distribution modelling code in R (an open-source

software and programming language commonly used

for data analysis) and developed bird call identification

models and species distribution probability maps for

nine different species of bird.

ANIMAL BIODIVERSITY MONITORING

Initially, the project used Android smartphones to

capture audio recordings but quickly switched to

AudioMoth due to the hardware’s simplicity and

low-cost per unit. “We were thrilled with the ease of

using AudioMoths,” says Matthew. “We have also

found the sound fidelity is much better than with the

smartphone, which was designed to record human

conversations, not environmental sounds.”

Following success in Pepperwood and surrounding

areas, Soundscapes to Landscapes received funding

from NASA’s Citizen Science for Earth Systems

Program (CSESP), which put the project on track to

map all of Sonoma County, a vast area of over 1760

square miles, by 2021.

Since the beginning of March this year, student

interns and community volunteers have already

collected recordings from more than a hundred sites,

totalling over 175,000 minutes of audio. “We could not

have had this productivity if it was not for the energy

and passion of our new project coordinator, Rose

Snyder, based at Point Blue Conservation Science,”

says Matthew. “Our team worked with Rose to create

a whole new process for managing citizen scientists

into teams, tracking AudioMoths, organising sound

recordings, and identifying properties to visit.”

Matthew believes that there is still work to do in

regards to providing NASA-funded citizen science

projects with more detailed guidelines on how to

promote and run projects with the general public.

“We worked with Sieve Analytics to create a new

Citizen Science interface to ARBIMON,” he says.

“This will allow us to find soundscapes with potential

bird calls. Citizen scientists can then quickly validate if

the bird call is really present or not.”

Once that data is validated and labelled, it is passed

to a research team at the University of California that

is using deep learning to identify bird calls. “We are

currently working on having a single convolutional

neural network classifier that will identify 32 bird

species in all of our recordings... currently 350,000

minutes in total,” says Matthew.

Despite the project’s growing support, there are still

many areas of Sonoma County that are difficult for the

team to access. “In the next field season, we will be

stepping up our effort to mail out flyers to targeted

property owners in these areas, and hope to send

recorders out to these landowners for deployments

on their properties,” Matthew explains.

To find out more about the Soundscapes to

Landscapes project and get involved in next year’s field

season, visit soundscapes2landscapes.org.

WIDE

REACH

‘ARBIMON’ stands

for Automated

Remote Biodiversity

Monitoring Network.

ARBIMON is a web-

based bioacoustics

analysis platform that

enables anyone with

an internet connection

to access soundscape

recordings. So far, the

research platform has

collected over one

million recordings from

monitoring stations in

Puerto Rico, Hawaii,

Arizona, Costa Rica,

Argentina, and Brazil.

“WE WERE THRILLED

WITH THE EASE OF

USING AUDIOMOTHS”

Above

Capturing bird calls

in the fieSds

Below

Dr Matthew Clark and

a team of volunteers

conduct a survey in

Sonoma County