Soundscapes as monitoring tool for conservation and restoration efforts

Photo: Andrés Felipe Aponte

In megadiverse areas, species composition at different guilds is thought to be sensitive to changes in ecosystem attributes. Whenever mechanisms maintaining high diversity levels promote species-specific differentiation, there are good chances that such sensitivity scales up to emergent ecosystem properties, offering the opportunity to find suitable ecosystem health indicators.  This project tests the hypotheses that this sensitivity to changes in vegetation cover exists for species determining landscape acoustic footprints and as such, acoustic footprints could be used as an objective tool for characterizing and monitoring ecosystem’s health.

At El Silencio Natural Reserve, we seek to establish a bioacoustic characterization and monitoring system to allow us to evaluate change processes at local scales, such as restoration actions, and at broader scales, such as the effect of climate change on biodiversity. We aim to develop this bioacoustic tool to gain understanding of fauna phenologic patterns through their acoustic communication and to differentiate habitats to represent them in noise and/or acoustic diversity maps. By this pilot research in the Reserve and collaborating with national and international partners, we are keen to develop a bioacoustic characterization and monitoring network.

Team

Paula Caycedo, MSc: Project coordinator/Instituto de Investigaciones Biológicas Alexander von Humboldt
Oscar Laverde, PhD: Associated Researcher/Analyst
Susana Rodríguez-Buritica, PhD. Associated Researcher/Analyst

---