Low-cost and time-efficient acoustic technology offers novel possibilities for the public to appreciate biodiversity and, more importantly, for conservationists to identify where and when diversity is under threat.
Capturing Biodiversity through Sounds
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Project Dhvani uses non-invasive audio recorders across two landscapes of remarkable strongholds of biodiversity in India: the dry tropical forests of central India and the misty rainforests of the Western Ghats. The project has three aims: understand how biodiversity varies across human land uses in central India and Western Ghats landscapes; stimulate curiosity and appreciation for biodiversity among the public through the window of sounds and test the feasibility of acoustics to aid conservation efforts.
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Jungle babbler (Turdoides striata) seen posing in a Mango plantation in Central India (Picture: Vijay Ramesh)
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How does it work?
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It's simple. Really!
You can see Pooja strapping a small audio recorder to this beautiful tree in the Nilgiris (Western Ghats). We press record and voila, you have thousands and thousands of minutes of recording of birds, amphibians, insects, mammals and of course, humans as well. |
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What happens to the sounds?
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In May and June 2018, we obtained > 72 hours of recording from 20 different sites across the Western Ghats and Central India. In collaboration with the EcoSounds Research Group at the Queensland University of Technology, this data was processed to derive metrics or indicators of species diversity. We are currently in the process of analyzing this data.
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This is a False Colour Spectrogram that is indicative of biodiversity such as birds, insects and amphibians vocalizing at different frequencies
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