The NASA-funded BioSoundSCape project is investigating a novel approach to correlate ecosystem acoustic and plant diversity in the Greater Cape Floristic Region (GCFR) of South Africa. The Principal Investigator, Dr. Matthew Clark and Tom Robinson from the Geography, Environment, and Planning department visited South Africa in July to kick-off fieldwork, which involves working with protected area rangers and volunteers to deploy small, low-cost sound recorders (AudioMoths) around the GCFR. The team currently has collected hundreds of thousands 1-minute recordings at over 580 sites. In October, NASA will also fly advanced sensors with their airplanes, as part of the larger BioSCape project, which will allow scaling of site data at a regional scale. The BioSoundSCape project was recently awarded additional NASA funding to develop an artificial intelligence algorithm with partner Rainforest Connections (RFCx) that will automatically detect birds and amphibians in the sound archive. As part of this project, RFCx will develop an easy-to-use dashboard that will give South African stakeholders involved in biodiversity conservation the ability to show diurnal trends in animal species and overall richness for each site or the region. Dr. Clark provided a high-level overview of the project in a recent BirdLife South Africa webinar called Conservation Conversations.
