Soundscape Ecology and Soundscape Monitoring

Yu-Huang Wang1, Eric Yen2, Guan-Shuo Mai3, Sheng-Shan Lu1, Chau-Chin Lin1, Simon Lin2

1Biodiversity Research Center, Academia Sinica2Academia Sinica Grid Computing Center3 Taiwan Forestry Research Institute

4th-5th Nov. 2015, Biodiversity Informatics Conference

Naning, Guanxi, China

Soundscape Ecology –New challenging research field in landscape ecology• The World Soundscape Project in 1970s http://www.sfu.ca/~truax/wsp.html

• Landmark papers• Pijanowski, B. C., et al. (2011). Soundscape Ecology: The Science of Sound in the Landscape. BioScience,

61(3), 203–216. doi:10.1525/bio.2011.61.3.6

• Pijanowski, B. C., Farina, A., Gage, S. H., Dumyahn, S. L., & Krause, B. L. (2011). What is soundscape ecology? An introduction and overview of an emerging new science. Landscape Ecology, 26(9), 1213–1232. doi:10.1007/s10980-011-9600-8

• Truax, B., & Barrett, G. W. (2011). Soundscape in a context of acoustic and landscape ecology. Landscape Ecology, 26(9), 1201–1207. doi:10.1007/s10980-011-9644-9

• Recent special issues in three journals• 2011 Landscape Ecology Special Issue – Soundscape Ecology http://link.springer.com/journal/10980/26/9/page/1

• 2013 Applied Acoustics Special Issue – Applied Soundscapes : Recent Advances in Soundscape Research http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/0003682X/74/2

• 2014 Ecological Informatics Special Issue – Ecological Acoustics http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/15749541/21/supp/C

• The new textbook

• Farina, A. (2014). Soundscape Ecology: Principles, Patterns, Methods and Applications

(p. 315). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands. doi:10.1007/978-94-007-7374-5

Data Issues on Soundscape Ecology• Big Data

• Data volume for one site soundscape recording in one year:(16 bits * 44.1 KHz * 2 channels * 60 seconds * 5 minutes * 2 / hour * 24 hours * 365 days/hours) / (8 bits/byte ) * 10-6 = 927 GB ~ 1 TB

• Many sites and many countries in long term: ??? PB…??? ZB

• How to manage, share, and utilize?

• Big Science• Hampton, S. E., et al. (2013). Big data and the future of ecology. Frontiers

in Ecology and the Environment, 11(3), 156–162. doi:10.1890/120103

• Towsey, M., Parsons, S., & Sueur, J. (2014). Ecology and acoustics at a large scale. Ecological Informatics, 21, 1–3. doi:10.1016/j.ecoinf.2014.02.002

2014 Asian Soundscape Workshop

• Malaysia, Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam

• Sharing experiences and having consensus on open data

• Developing a soundscape monitoring protocol for Asia

• Collaboration on long-term joint monitoring of Asian soundscape

• Creating Big Open Linked Data (BOLD) environment

• Fostering soundscape research, conservation, education in Asia

• Initiating Soundscape Alliance in Asia

Asian Soundscape http://soundscape.twgrid.org

2014/11/17-20 Asian Soundscape Workshop, Lienhuachih Research Center, TFRI, Taiwan

Exploring soundscape by date and time of different sites

Browsing soundscape by map

Forest soundscape in Sanyi Township, Miaoli County, Taiwan

Listening to and browsing metadata of a soundscape recording

Exploring the components of soundscape by spectrogram

Anthrophone: traffic…

Biophone: bird song

Selecting range of frequency band and identifying soundscape components

Comparing soundscape from different sites

Forest soundscape from Taiwan, Vietnam, and Thailand

Analyzing Soundscape – Computing 5 soundscape indices in R

Data: 123 WAV files (51 MB each, 6GB in total)CPU: Intel Xeon 2.0GHz 6 Cores x 2 (20 threads

used for computing; 88% used)Memory: 24GB (87% used)Time: 3,140.45 seconds

Challenges of the long-term soundscape monitoring for the GRIDs• Demands on high speed internet for uploading acoustic data as well

as distributed high volume storage and powerful computing for ever-increasing soundscape data

• Establishing partnership between soundscape ecologists and GRID center in each country for long-term archiving, sharing, and using the World soundscape big data

• Interdisciplinary collaboration and innovations for developing applications on visualizing and analyzing soundscape big data to inform public, decision, and policy on natural soundscape conservation

Thanks for your attention