Meeting Abstract
An ecosystem is characterized by a number of geographic and biological factors, but often overlooked is the role of sound in an ecosystem. Soundscape ecology is the study of the acoustic component of an ecosystem, which is made up of three types of sound: natural sound from living organisms (biophony), natural sound not from living organisms (geophony), and sound generated by humans (anthrophony). These sounds, their sources, and their interactions can often reveal important information about the environment. As Colgate University continues to make decisions about how to manage its landscape and forested areas and temperatures continue to rise due to climate change, soundscapes can reveal how these changes impact biodiversity and abundance in the forested land around campus. Thus, by recording and analyzing the soundscapes of Colgate University’s forests, we can measure the health of this land and track changes that occur over time. While many organisms can be heard in these soundscape recordings, the most acoustically prominent are migratory songbirds that reside in the forests during the summer. As a result, we collected recordings with the intention of focusing on the vocalizations of birds. We used microphones to gather soundscape recordings from specific locations in the forests around Colgate University at dawn and dusk, the times of the day when birds are most vocal. Using R software, we computed indices for measuring biodiversity and the levels of anthropogenic disturbance within the forest. We found that as temperatures rose across the summer season, the levels of bioacoustic activity decreased within each recording, implying that of rising temperatures may increase biological silence in these ecosystems.
