Utilizing the Cyberforest live sound system with social media to remotely conduct woodland bird censuses in Central Japan.

Kaoru Saito,Kazuyo Nagahama,Ayako Toko,Akio Fujiwara,Reiko Kurosawa,Masaya Nakayama,Kazuhiko Nakamura,Mutsuyuki Ueta,Hill Hiroki Kobayashi

doi:10.1007/s13280-015-0708-y

Abstract

We have developed a system that streams and archives live sound from remote areas across Japan via an unmanned automatic camera. The system was used to carry out pilot bird censuses in woodland; this allowed us to examine the use of live sound transmission and the role of social media as a mediator in remote scientific monitoring. The system has been streaming sounds 8 h per day for more than five years. We demonstrated that: (1) the transmission of live sound from a remote woodland could be used effectively to monitor birds in a remote location; (2) the simultaneous involvement of several participants via Internet Relay Chat to listen to live sound transmissions could enhance the accuracy of census data collection; and (3) interactions through Twitter allowed members of the public to engage or help with the remote monitoring of birds and experience inaccessible nature through the use of novel technologies.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s13280-015-0708-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Highlights

The spread of the Internet and mobile digital devices has given advent to a new scientific era, with scientists as well as members of the public accruing various benefits from rapidly evolving communication technologies. Parr (2008) stressed that shaping Internet technologies for ecology is an important focus in ecological informatics for the century
A total of 36 bird species were recorded in the audio census over the 3-year study period, while carrying out the field census a total of 28 species were detected during the same period (Supplementary material 5)
Species for which very similar values were obtained with either method were Siberian blue robin (SBR), Eurasian nuthatch (EN), goldcrest (GC), and Japanese grosbeak (JG)

Summary

Introduction

The spread of the Internet and mobile digital devices has given advent to a new scientific era, with scientists as well as members of the public accruing various benefits from rapidly evolving communication technologies. Parr (2008) stressed that shaping Internet technologies for ecology is an important focus in ecological informatics for the century. Parr (2008) stressed that shaping Internet technologies for ecology is an important focus in ecological informatics for the century This view is borne out by researchers such as Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s13280-015-0708-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. Internet and mobile devices enable users to obtain various types of digitalized information from virtually anywhere on Earth, including remote locations, in real time. This realization motivated us to start our longterm Cyberforest Project under which systems for recording ecological information by unmanned automatic cameras and microphones in remote natural areas across Japan have subsequently been developed. We outline the basic system used in Cyberforest to collect such environmental data, and report on two experimental studies that test the systems’ ability to capture live sounds from a remote woodland expanse, plus how the subsequent interaction with social media can be used to conduct bird censuses remotely

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Conclusion