Soundscape Ecology Research Articles

Progress and outlook for soundscape ecology

Progress and outlook for soundscape ecology

Sonic Liminality: Soundscapes, Semiotics, and Ecologies of Meaning

The spaces between the modernist categories of human and nonhuman, or nature and culture, are collapsing in the Anthropocene. As human technological influence continues become evidenced as a global geologic force, ‘liminal spaces’ expand. Liminal spaces are spaces at the intersections and aggregations of human- and nonhuman-animal umwelten mediated by technology. Soundscapes, the collection of human and nonhuman created sounds of a particular place and time, give us unique access to the semiotic exchanges that constitute those spaces. Soundscape ecology, the study of ecosystemic relations through sound, is a method by which to engage and understand those liminal spaces. Understanding liminal spaces in this context of soundscape ecology offers insights into new ways in which organisms relate to and within their environments through sign exchange; or, new ways animals engage complex worlds of experience. In this paper I articulate this argument and define ‘sonic liminality’ as a biosemiotic process of the creation and engagement in hybrid natures. I examine umwelt engagement through a specific case study: analysis of soundscapes at a local zoological park in the southeastern United States. I argue that the digital technology-driven empirical work of soundscape ecology gives semioticians access to informational ecosystems, and therefore to the ways in which information transforms the boundaries between individual organisms and their built and natural environments.

Listening to Silence: Bringing Forward the Background Noise of Being

This paper sets out to conduct an embodied and situated aural analysis of what silence in Northern Norway is about, with the aim of bringing forward the background noise. The paper brings together theories on construction of the rural, time-space relations, soundscape ecology, and on affect and power, and it merges academic traditions about how to communicate findings from non-visual biased studies. This interdisciplinary framework provides a novel structure for both analysing material and communicating findings from embodied studies of listening out. The study found that silence in Northern Norway is about not listening to the economy of scale, to the commodification of the natural conditions and the suppression of lifestyles and territory. The paper illustrates how power is an inherent part of listening and how listening is a practice that is enacted to create emotions that are associated with a specific time-space relation.

Artists and scientists come together to explore the meaning of natural sound

David Monacchi has spent the last 20 years hiking into some of the most remote habitats on Earth. He’s canoed through flooded Amazonian forests and tread deep into the jungles of Southeast Asia and Africa. But he isn’t on a quest for rare animals or for samples of their remains. Monacchi, a composer, is hunting for the ecosystem’s sound. In February 2016, David Monacchi sets up the three-dimensional recording systems for the circadian 24-hour continuous recording in terra firme primary forest habitat in the Tiputini River area, Yasuni National Park near Coca, Ecuador. Image credit: Alex d’Emilia (photographer). Sound is everywhere in tropical forests. Rain drips from water-slicked leaves, birds screech, monkeys titter and bellow, branches crack, wind moans, and insects chirp and buzz. Vibrations pierce the humid understory and echo through the airy canopy, creating a symphony of sounds that speaks to both artist and scientist. Monacchi is harvesting artistic inspiration as well as data. The chirps and rattles contain information about how species interact with the environment and each other, as well as the health of the habitat. Sometimes Monacchi uses his recordings to inspire the public, sometimes to inform ecological research. “I’m trying to be at the edge of both worlds,” he says. People straddling music and science often have a variety of titles. Monacchi usually describes himself as an interdisciplinary artist. Sometimes he prefers sound engineer or ecoacoustic composer. Likewise, names for this field vary. For ecologists, the study of sound’s role in ecological processes is ecoacoustics (1). For composers, it’s soundscape ecology or acoustic ecology. Labels fall away as creative specialists in the arts, the natural sciences, or both come together to collaborate. They work with environmental sound for a variety of reasons—sometimes musical, sometimes scientific, and sometimes both. All strive to understand and explore …

Contributions of MIR to soundscape ecology. Part 3: Tagging and classifying audio features using a multi-labeling k-nearest neighbor approach

Scientists are using acoustic monitoring to assess the impact of altered soundscapes on wildlife communities and human systems. In the soundscape ecology field, monitoring and analyses approaches rely on the interdisciplinary intersection of ecology, acoustics, and computer science. Combining theory and practice of each field in the context of Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD), soundscape ecologists provide innovative monitoring solutions for ecologically-driven research questions. We propose a soundscape content analysis framework for improved knowledge outcome with assistance of the new multi-label (ML) concept.Here, we investigated the effectiveness of a ML k-nearest neighbor algorithm (ML-kNN) for labeling concurrent soundscape components within a single recording. We manually labeled 1200 field recordings for the presence of soundscape components and extracted ecological acoustic features, audio profile features, and Gaussian-mixture model features for each recording. Then, we tested the ML-kNN algorithm accuracy with well-established metrics adapted to ML learning.We found that seventeen unique acoustic features could predict a set of biophonic, geophonic, and anthrophonic labels for a single field recording with average precision of 0.767. However, certain labels were predicted incorrectly depending on the time of day and co-occurrence of that label with another label, suggesting further refinement is needed to improve the accuracy of predicted labels.Overall, this ML classification approach could enable researchers to label field recordings more quickly and generate an “alert” system for monitoring changes in a specific sound class. Ultimately, the adaptation of the ML algorithm may provide soundscape ecologists with new metadata labels that are searchable in large databases of soundscape field recordings.

Contributions of MIR to soundscape ecology. Part I: Potential methodological synergies

We present here the potential synergies between a sub-discipline of music called computational musicology and its associated toolkit Music Information Retrieval (MIR) systems and the current needs of soundscape ecologists who use passive acoustic recorders to collect massive amounts of audio data. These cross-sub-disciplinary synergies fall into three broad methodological categories: (1) automated feature extraction, (2) sound classification and labeling using machine learning, and (3) data visualization. We argue that the use of the MIR toolkit by soundscape ecologists could represent the development of a second generation of soundscape metrics, which are more translatable to policy and natural resource management problems. Two companion articles in this special issue by the authors provide a more detailed examination of the potential for computational musicology's MIR toolkit as applied to questions common to the emerging field of soundscape ecology.

Contributions of MIR to Soundscape Ecology. Part 2: Spectral timbral analysis for discriminating soundscape components

Soundscape ecology evaluates biodiversity and environmental disturbances by investigating the interaction among soundscape components (biological, geophysical, and human-produced sounds) using data collected with autonomous recording units. Current analyses consider the acoustic properties of frequency and amplitude resulting in varied metrics, but rarely focus on the discrimination of soundscape components. Computational musicologists analyze similar data but consider a third acoustic property, timbre.Here, we investigated the effectiveness of spectral timbral analysis to distinguish among dominant soundscape components. This process included manually labeling and extracting spectral timbral features for each recording. Then, we tested classification accuracy with linear and quadratic discriminant analyses on combinations of spectral timbral features.Different spectral timbral feature groups distinguished between biological, geophysical, and manmade sounds in a single field recording. Furthermore, as we tested different combinations of spectral timbral features that resulted in both high and very low accuracy results, we found that they could be ordered to “sift” out field recordings by individual dominant soundscape component.By using timbre as a new acoustic property in soundscape analyses, we could classify dominant soundscape components effectively. We propose further investigation into a sifting scheme that may allow researchers to focus on more specific research questions such as understanding changes in biodiversity, discriminating by taxonomic class, or to inspect weather-related events.

Underwater Soundscape Monitoring and Fish Bioacoustics: A Review

Soundscape ecology is a rapidly growing field with approximately 93% of all scientific articles on this topic having been published since 2010 (total about 610 publications since 1985). Current acoustic technology is also advancing rapidly, enabling new devices with voluminous data storage and automatic signal detection to define sounds. Future uses of passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) include biodiversity assessments, monitoring habitat health, and locating spawning fishes. This paper provides a review of ambient sound and soundscape ecology, fish acoustic monitoring, current recording and sampling methods used in long-term PAM, and parameters/metrics used in acoustic data analysis.

Assessing soundscape preferences and the impact of specific sounds on outdoor recreation activities using qualitative data analysis and immersive virtual environment technology

Soundscape ecology is an interdisciplinary field focused, in part, on understanding the relationship between humans and sounds from biological, geophysical, and anthropogenic sources. In this study, we utilized immersive virtual environment technology to identify individuals’ soundscape preferences in parks and protected areas, their emotional perceptions towards these sounds, and the recreational activities they believe would be most impacted by these sounds. Findings from the study were congruent with previous research: There is a clear preference for biophony and geophony and an aversion to anthropophony. Participants also provided insight about the types of activities they found most conducive with individual sounds and soundscapes. We suggest that park and protected area managers take management actions that preserve biophonic and geophonic sounds to improve visitor experiences. We also suggest they educate visitors about the types of sounds they are likely to hear at a specific recreation setting so that visitors experiences are not negatively affected by unmet expectations. Management implicationsPark managers may be able to use the findings presented in this study to:●Mitigate the negative impacts that anthropogenic sounds are likely to have on visitors’ experiences.●Communicate with visitors about the various types of sounds present at recreation settings so visitors have more accurate expectations about possible recreation experiences.●Include information on soundscapes and their impact on recreation experiences in educational materials, allowing visitors to make more informed decisions prior to their visits.

Exploring the biodiversity in Alas Purwo National Park, East Java through soundscape ecology

Biodiversity assessment is becoming one important things to do, to conserve ecosystem. Biodiversity assessment’s new method was utilized the nature sounds which is produced by animals in an ecosystem. There are three possibilities sounds sources in an ecosystem, they are: biophonies, geophonies, and anthrophonies, those sound sources will reflect environment acoustics characteristics, called Soundscape. This paper utilized the Soundscape method to predict biodiversity in a forest. Alas Purwo National Park, Banyuwangi, East Java was the location where soundscape data were collected for several days. The soundscape data was processed using R-Statistical Computing Environment software to compute some index values of Bioacoustics Index (BIO), Acoustic Entropy (H), Acoustic Evenness Index (AEI) and Normalized Difference Soundscape Index (NDSI). These indices enabled to characterize the forest in Alas Purwo National Park, East Java, Indonesia for several types of forests selected. The AEI value of 0.69 indicate inequality between frequency bands. The BIO value of 10.79 indicate a forest that is dominant of biotic component. The H value of 0.88 indicate more diverse biotic components. The NDSI value of 0.97 indicate a forest that is dominant with biophonies rather than antrophonies. The results have indicated that some indices (AEI and BIO) could reflect the biodiversity in selected ecosystem, but other indices (H and NDSI) showed anomaly result because of difference landscape between selected ecosystem and ecosystem’s weather when data collecting period.

Urban soundscapes in the historic centre of Thessaloniki: sonic architecture and sonic identity

ABSTRACTThis paper shows that contemporary sound in urban areas consists of a fragile equilibrium of sonic territories with high heterogeneity. Sound scenes in urban environments are studied using ecological sound tools, including soundscape ecology and acoustic ecology. This study proposes an interdisciplinary framework that combines quantitative and qualitative sonic and architectural data to analyse, describe and design sonic space. Five territories with distinctive sonic identities in the historic centre of Thessaloniki in Greece were selected and compared with their architectural characteristics. Though these characteristics of Thessaloniki are similar to other cities of Greece, the continuing transformation of urban sonic identities lends importance to this research. The analysis revealed unique information about the identity and urbanity of the territories, challenging the established noise–silence dichotomy and opening up new perspectives on an integrated sustainable urban design.

Evidence that an informal environmental summer camp can contribute to the construction of the conceptual understanding and situational interest of STEM in middle-school youth

ABSTRACTYouth are introduced to STEM topics through informal settings like science camps, aquaria, and zoos. In these interactive and sensory-rich environments, a well-designed programme can help participants to acquire knowledge and cultivate interest through experiential learning. Given the importance of informal activities in environmental education, it is crucial to identify which contextual components lead to successful learning outcomes. Thus far, research in environmental STEM education has focused on brief experiences, such as one-time visits to curated environments likeaquaria. Investigating the impact of multi-day/longer experiences in natural settings is critical because the level of engagement with the STEM topic and the interaction with the learning environment in such experiences have different cognitive and affective impacts. To address these current limitations, we explored whether there is evidence that a four-day, immersive outdoor soundscape ecology camp contributed to situational interest and conceptual understanding of middle-school youth. During the soundscape camp, a variety of evidence was collected through different instruments including drawing activities, questionnaires, an interview, and field-observations. Through a qualitative analysis and open coding, we identified three core principles of informal outdoor curricular design that positively contribute to participants’ learning experiences, including direct experience with nature, the use of authentic technology, and exercises that promote collaborative teamwork. We argue that activities that promote scientific practices and engagement with authentic tools in a real-world context creates a learning environment in which participants collaboratively construct deep conceptual understanding of different aspects of environmental STEM topics and foster interest in the context of science inquiry.

Echoes in the Mountains: The Romantic Lake District’s Soundscape

Echoes in the Mountains: The Romantic Lake District’s Soundscape Joanna E. Taylor (bio) In december 1844, william wordsworth wrote a pair of now infamous letters to the editor of the Morning Post, in which he decried the proposal to extend the railway to Windermere. One of Wordsworth’s central arguments was that the railway—and the countless numbers of visitors it would bring—would disrupt a much-loved characteristic of the Lake District: its quietness. “The wide-spread waters of these regions,” he declared, “are in their nature peaceful; so are the steep mountains and the rocky glens; nor can they be profitably enjoyed but by a mind disposed to peace.” A person who could enjoy quiet and solitude “profitably” by discovering meanings in them was the only kind of person Wordsworth considered qualified to appreciate his native region. He concluded with a damning suggestion of where minds disposed to noise could go: “[g]o to a pantomime, a farce, or a puppet-show, if you want noisy pleasure.”1 These were personal judgments; as Peter Coates pithily puts it, “[j]ust as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, noise frequently resides in the ear of the listener. ”2 One era’s noise might become another’s sound, or even another’s silence. Acoustic experiences were as subject to contemporary fashion as visual ones, and the late-eighteenth century catalyzed the emergence of hearing as what Sophia Rosenfeld calls “a cultural effect as much as a physiological one.”3 Wordsworth’s considerations of the relationship between noise, sound and silence in the Lake District advanced a debate on the role of sound in the artistic imagination, and in the environment, that [End Page 383] was at the foreground of aesthetic thinking in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This article is interested in that relationship between the Lake District’s landscape and its soundscape. I argue that the soundscape ecology portrayed in Romantic-era tourist guides, travel narratives and poetry about the Lake District developed a connection between the region’s natural features and its human visitors. The Lake District’s valleys and mountains formed a natural amphitheatre that witnessed what Martin Kaltenecker has called “the materialisation of a listening discourse,” whereby the venue for a sonic experience indicates how the listener should respond to the sounds heard there.4 In the Lake District, this “materialisation” resulted in a form of acoustic sublimity where sound was experienced as something tangible through its interactions both with the region’s geological forms and each listener’s body. That experience might be re-materialized through its written communication. “[W]ords work in the sounding,” Susan Wolfson writes, and sounds also work in the words; literary form could offer a vehicle through which to communicate and preserve the acoustic sublime.5 Stephanie Kuduk Weiner would class the acoustic sublime as an “aural aesthetic that raises a series of questions—about sensation and knowledge, reality and representation, words and things—analogous to those raised by the discourse of vision.”6 In this case, the unique acoustic affects created by the way sounds responded to the Lake District’s distinctive terrain encouraged listeners to place themselves in imaginative and embodied conversation with the source of the sound and the landscape that effected a deeper sense of belonging within the region’s ecology. I demonstrate here that Romantic-era visitors to the Lake District took advantage of its topography to emphasize certain acoustic experiences that, in turn, influenced their imaginative and written responses to the landscape. What I am interested in, in short, is how sound functioned as what Henri Lefebvre called a “spatial code”; that is, I suggest that sound was used by historical travelers to the Lake District to read and interpret the space.7 My argument here contributes to the rapid growth of interest in critical sound studies that has occurred in both scientific and humanist study in the last decade. Indeed, Mark Smith has suggested that “ [h]istorians are listening to the past with an intensity, frequency, keenness, [End Page 384] and acuity unprecedented in scope and magnitude.”8 R. Murray Schafer’s introduction of the term “soundscape” in...

Promoting STEM Interest and Connections to Nature Through a Soundscape Ecology Camp for Students With Visual Impairments

Promoting STEM Interest and Connections to Nature Through a Soundscape Ecology Camp for Students With Visual Impairments

Mapping the diversity of spectral shapes discriminates between adjacent benthic biophonies

MEPS Marine Ecology Progress Series Contact the journal Facebook Twitter RSS Mailing List Subscribe to our mailing list via Mailchimp HomeLatest VolumeAbout the JournalEditorsTheme Sections MEPS 585:31-48 (2017) - DOI: https://doi.org/10.3354/meps12370 Mapping the diversity of spectral shapes discriminates between adjacent benthic biophonies J. Lossent1,2,3,*, L. Di Iorio1,3,4, C. A. Valentini-Poirier5, P. Boissery5, C. Gervaise1,4 1Research Institute CHORUS, 38000 Grenoble, France 2France Energies Marines, 29200 Brest, France 3Gipsa-lab, CNRS & Grenoble INP, UMR 5216, 38402 Grenoble, France 4Chair Chorus, Foundation of Grenoble Institute of Technology, 38000, Grenoble, France 5French Water Agency Rhône Méditerranée Corse (RMC), 13001 Marseille, France *Corresponding author: julie.lossent@chorusacoustics.com ABSTRACT: Coastal soundscapes are dominated by broadband transient sounds primarily emitted by benthic invertebrates. These sounds are characterized by a very large dynamic of amplitude. The loudest ones propagate further and interfere with the detectability of benthic sounds by invading other more distant habitats. Acoustic diversity assessment is therefore biased when applying acoustic indices related to the signal’s power. Here, we propose new acoustic indices (IDSS: indices of the diversity of spectral shape) capable of extracting the diversity of the benthic invertebrate biophony (BIB) despite interference from loud and abundant sounds. A passive acoustic ecological survey was conducted in a shallow Mediterranean bay with a small-scale mosaic of biocenosis. The sound pressure level and spectrum of the BIB revealed that the rocky fringe had the most powerful biophony, propagating up to 3680 m, thus ‘invading’ other habitats. However, these power-based indices failed to depict BIB diversity. The IDSS allowed us to discriminate BIB diversity despite the interfering rocky fringe biophony, including low-power sounds not depicted by traditional power-based methods. Four main categories of benthic invertebrates sounds (BIS) spectra were found. Two categories (high-power, peak frequencies ~3 to 4 kHz) were mainly linked to the rocky fringe. Their contribution to the diversity (56%) decreased with increasing distance to the fringe, where low-power BIS (peak frequencies above 15 kHz) predominantly contributed to the BIB (42%) and may be specific to coralligenous reefs. The IDSS enables a better characterization and quantification of BIB diversity and soundscape structure with a fine spatial resolution (~200 m). KEY WORDS: Soundscape ecology · Mapping biophony · Passive acoustic ecological survey · Benthic invertebrate sounds · Acoustics indices · Diversity of spectral shapes · Acoustic monitoring Full text in pdf format PreviousNextCite this article as: Lossent J, Di Iorio L, Valentini-Poirier CA, Boissery P, Gervaise C (2017) Mapping the diversity of spectral shapes discriminates between adjacent benthic biophonies. Mar Ecol Prog Ser 585:31-48. https://doi.org/10.3354/meps12370 Export citation RSS - Facebook - Tweet - linkedIn Cited by Published in MEPS Vol. 585. Online publication date: December 22, 2017 Print ISSN: 0171-8630; Online ISSN: 1616-1599 Copyright © 2017 Inter-Research.

A Song of the Paddle: haptic aesthetics of canoe travel in the English Lake District

This paper is a critical exercise in haptic aesthetics. The subject matter of such an inquiry is a rather simple one, namely, me in a canoe with a paddle and nowhere in particular to go, in essence, a form of leisure travel explained phenomenologically. Such humble beginnings are interspersed with arguments that illustrate haptic aesthetics along epistemological lines. Further still, it will be shown that paddling as a sensuous leisure activity is deeply haptic but also acoustic and the theory of ‘soundscape ecology’ will be used here to help further describe the sound and feeling of paddling a canoe in a natural environment. It is in this theoretical and sensory connection that readers should notice some ethical connotations and it is also such a connection that illustrates what could be called a ‘practical’ or ‘everyday’ aesthetics of leisure.

A spatiotemporal analysis of acoustic interactions between great reed warblers (Acrocephalus arundinaceus) using microphone arrays and robot audition software HARK.

Acoustic interactions are important for understanding intra‐ and interspecific communication in songbird communities from the viewpoint of soundscape ecology. It has been suggested that birds may divide up sound space to increase communication efficiency in such a manner that they tend to avoid overlap with other birds when they sing. We are interested in clarifying the dynamics underlying the process as an example of complex systems based on short‐term behavioral plasticity. However, it is very problematic to manually collect spatiotemporal patterns of acoustic events in natural habitats using data derived from a standard single‐channel recording of several species singing simultaneously. Our purpose here was to investigate fine‐scale spatiotemporal acoustic interactions of the great reed warbler. We surveyed spatial and temporal patterns of several vocalizing color‐banded great reed warblers (Acrocephalus arundinaceus) using an open‐source software for robot audition HARK (Honda Research Institute Japan Audition for Robots with Kyoto University) and three new 16‐channel, stand‐alone, and water‐resistant microphone arrays, named DACHO spread out in the bird's habitat. We first show that our system estimated the location of two color‐banded individuals’ song posts with mean error distance of 5.5 ± 4.5 m from the location of observed song posts. We then evaluated the temporal localization accuracy of the songs by comparing the duration of localized songs around the song posts with those annotated by human observers, with an accuracy score of average 0.89 for one bird that stayed at one song post. We further found significant temporal overlap avoidance and an asymmetric relationship between songs of the two singing individuals, using transfer entropy. We believe that our system and analytical approach contribute to a better understanding of fine‐scale acoustic interactions in time and space in bird communities.

Acoustic masking of soniferous species of the St-Lawrence lowlands

How much of the acoustic resource shared by vocalizing animal species is masked by human-induced noise has become a central question in the emerging field of soundscape ecology. The goal of our study was to evaluate the joint probability that masking could occur for anuran, bird, or stridulating orthopteran species along the spectral, spatial and temporal dimensions of the acoustic space. We evaluated acoustic overlap in the dominant frequencies, absolute amplitudes (emitter-receiver distances), and time-series (temporal match-mismatch) of human- and animal-induced sounds in three landscape settings: urban, peri-urban and rural. Acoustic overlap was evaluated at the day scale during the active vocalizing period of each taxon. Our results suggest that acoustic masking is unlikely for a vast majority of species in the three taxonomic groups; ranging from 5–7% for anurans to 3–4% for birds and less than 1% for orthopterans. However, in urban contexts, acoustic masking could be a selective force when coupled to other factors that covary with the amount of noise produced by human activities, such as habitat loss and degradation.

Scientific Ideas Included in the Concepts of Bioacoustics, Acoustic Ecology, Ecoacoustics, Soundscape Ecology, and Vibroacoustics

AbstractThe paper discusses the research areas which are placed in the modern science on the borderline between ecology and acoustics. It is explained what ideas are included in the concepts of bioacoustics, acoustic ecology, ecoacoustics, and soundscape ecology. The results obtained in these domains are compared with those received in vibroacoustic research presented at the Polish WIBROTECH conference cycle. The paper suggests an inventory of research topics connected with acoustics and ecology. In the second part of the paper the author presents the possibilities of ambisonic technology of recording and listening to sounds for the analysis in bioacoustic research.

Towards an Interdisciplinary Focus on Sound in Ethnobiology Research

Research on perception and ecological knowledge in ethnobiology has primarily focused on sight, in tandem with taste, smell, and touch. Sound, however, has been largely neglected as a topical or methodological focus. This review addresses research in ethnomusicology and soundscape ecology to suggest how attention to sound could open new avenues and add value to ethnoecological research.