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Bioacoustic Devices Could Help Save Rainforests (qz.com)
"Researchers writing in Science argue that networked audio recording devices mounted in trees could be used to monitor wildlife populations and better evaluate whether conservation projects are working or not," writes Slashdot reader Damien1972. From the report: Compared to ground surveys and camera traps, the technology provides cheap continuous, real-time biodiversity monitoring at the landscape scale. Thousands of hours of recordings can now be collected with long-lasting batteries and stored digitally. In sites with solar power and cellular signal, multi-year recordings have now been transmitted and saved to scientists' databases. That's possible thanks to the steep drop in the price of equipment that enables researchers to collect more than short, isolated sound snapshots.
The key, says co-authors Eddie Game of The Nature Conservancy and Zuzana Burivalova at Princeton University, is to build out enough data to understand how changing soundscapes reflect biodiversity on the ground. Game says he has found plenty of "high-conservation value" tropical forests that are devoid of key species. This is common in reserves set aside by owners of plantation crops such as palm oil. Algorithms can use these recording to learn the sound of healthy forests, and infer the composition of their species. In Papua New Guinea, for example, the researchers found soundscapes in fragmented forests were far quieter during the dawn and evening choruses, the short cacophonous periods during the changing of day and night. Once enough data has been collected [...] the technology can be applied to the zero deforestation commitments set by corporations.
The key, says co-authors Eddie Game of The Nature Conservancy and Zuzana Burivalova at Princeton University, is to build out enough data to understand how changing soundscapes reflect biodiversity on the ground. Game says he has found plenty of "high-conservation value" tropical forests that are devoid of key species. This is common in reserves set aside by owners of plantation crops such as palm oil. Algorithms can use these recording to learn the sound of healthy forests, and infer the composition of their species. In Papua New Guinea, for example, the researchers found soundscapes in fragmented forests were far quieter during the dawn and evening choruses, the short cacophonous periods during the changing of day and night. Once enough data has been collected [...] the technology can be applied to the zero deforestation commitments set by corporations.
Don't go frolick in the woods children, there is a witch and she is listening.
Is now listening to all the birds and monkeys... At least we may be able to determine with scientific precision if a tree makes noise falling in the woods when nobody is around.
Less human influence.
yeah great... and radiate them all to become mutant
This isn't going to do anything fast enough to save the rainforests. Hitler II just took over Brazil on the "make Brazil great again" platform. Human civilization is unmanageable and deserves to die off, unfortunately most everything else goes with it.
To save the environment, you are going to use a a series of highly polluting CVD technologies? Do people even think things through remotely anymore?
"Liberalism is a very noble idea, currently controlled by some very bad people. Be sure you do not get the two confused.
Maybe so. But why do the rainforests need to be "saved"? Maybe they don't need to be saved at all. In fact, my inclination is that "saving the rainforests" is aking to "saving the whales", "save the global warming", and "save that tatas", and "save the skeets".
Every spy knows that the easiest way to defeat them is to run the water.
Have gnu, will travel.
The only way to save rainforests is to prosecute/bankrupt companies that cut down rainforests.
Future feature: add a motion detector and gun to the camera to add some real teeth to the tech.
Sad for them my hobby is wandering into jungles and planting cheap electronic devices that randomly play sounds of motorized vehicles and/or chainsaws.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Especially now that Jair Bolsonaro is President. However, even before he was in charge the land barons, ranchers, loggers and others who sought to exploit the destruction of the rain forest for profits were perfectly willing to kill anyone who got in the way. So it doesn't matter whether or not you can remotely detect that your conservation project isn't working because there's nothing that you or anyone can do to stop these men. That's what the liberals don't understand. It's really very violent down there in Brazil and nobody there cares much if a foreign busybody is killed for sticking their nose where it didn't belong. Under those circumstances, detection is meaningless. It's not like we cannot already see what's going on in satellite imagery. There's just not a damn thing that anyone can do about it.
Finally we'd be able to answer that question....if a tree falling in the woods without anyone around, makes a sound!
Listen for the sound of chainsaws?
If we got rid of 50% of the human population, that would help, as overpopulation is the source of global warming.
Just a weird name for a cricket
It'd be better to go around playing sounds of animals that could be there but probably have gone extinct.
I have found just the website to complete that mission!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"I got a news article byline by adding technology where it's not being used"
These tech initiatives and the many many research jobs and grant money would be better spent just buying land for conservation and/or building wind/solar power generation capacity.