Long-term monitoring of soundscapes and deciphering a usable index: Examples of fish choruses from Australia

• DOI: 10.1121/2.0000286
• Publication Date: 2016-11-16T13:00:58Z
• Authors: Miles Parsons; Christine Erbe; Robert McCauley; James McWilliam; Sarah Marley; Alexander Gavrilov; Iain Parnum
• Keywords: Soundscape; Bioacoustics; Ambient noise level

Similar to geophysical and anthropogenic noise, biological contributions soundscapes vary considerably in frequency, time, intensity. Fish choruses are a perfect example, contributing significantly marine noise used here as an analogue for variations soundscapes. Their species-characteristic signals thus, so do their choruses, which can raise ambient levels by up tens of decibels, prolonged periods. Multi-species occur, with varying degrees temporal frequency partitioning, or none at all. Australian datasets underwater have been acquired nearly two decades multiple fish calling patterns detected. Detecting, delineating, understanding these is non-trivial metric relating contribution the soundscape biodiversity habitat would be invaluable tool. In recent years, several acoustic indices derived, proving useful terrestrial domain. Investigation application environmental studies has also begun. However, such plethora widely sources changing affect indices. This paper describes simple automatic suite tools help identify wide range time potentially underrepresented missed complexity