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

Similar to geophysical and anthropogenic noise, biological contributions to soundscapes vary considerably in frequency, time, and intensity. Fish choruses are a perfect example, contributing significantly to marine biological noise and are used here as an analogue for variations in soundscapes. Thei...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Parsons, Miles, Erbe, Christine, McCauley, Robert, McWilliam, J., Marley, S., Gavrilov, Alexander, Parnum, Iain
Format: Conference Paper
Published: 2016
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/80032
_version_ 1848764144477536256
author Parsons, Miles
Erbe, Christine
McCauley, Robert
McWilliam, J.
Marley, S.
Gavrilov, Alexander
Parnum, Iain
author_facet Parsons, Miles
Erbe, Christine
McCauley, Robert
McWilliam, J.
Marley, S.
Gavrilov, Alexander
Parnum, Iain
author_sort Parsons, Miles
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description Similar to geophysical and anthropogenic noise, biological contributions to soundscapes vary considerably in frequency, time, and intensity. Fish choruses are a perfect example, contributing significantly to marine biological noise and are used here as an analogue for variations in soundscapes. Their species-characteristic signals vary thus, so do their choruses, which can raise ambient noise levels by up to tens of decibels, for prolonged periods. Multi-species choruses can occur, with varying degrees of temporal and frequency partitioning, or none at all. Australian datasets of underwater noise have been acquired for nearly two decades and multiple fish calling patterns have been detected. Detecting, delineating, and understanding these patterns is non-trivial and a metric relating their contribution to the soundscape with biodiversity or habitat would be an invaluable tool. In recent years, several acoustic indices have been derived, proving useful in the terrestrial domain. Investigation of their application in marine environmental studies has also begun. However, such a plethora of widely varying sources and changing patterns can affect acoustic indices. This paper describes a simple and automatic suite of tools to help identify signals of a wide range of time patterns which are potentially underrepresented or missed by acoustic complexity or biodiversity indices.
first_indexed 2025-11-14T11:14:41Z
format Conference Paper
id curtin-20.500.11937-80032
institution Curtin University Malaysia
institution_category Local University
last_indexed 2025-11-14T11:14:41Z
publishDate 2016
recordtype eprints
repository_type Digital Repository
spelling curtin-20.500.11937-800322021-01-04T06:07:08Z Long-term monitoring of soundscapes and deciphering a usable index: Examples of fish choruses from Australia Parsons, Miles Erbe, Christine McCauley, Robert McWilliam, J. Marley, S. Gavrilov, Alexander Parnum, Iain Similar to geophysical and anthropogenic noise, biological contributions to soundscapes vary considerably in frequency, time, and intensity. Fish choruses are a perfect example, contributing significantly to marine biological noise and are used here as an analogue for variations in soundscapes. Their species-characteristic signals vary thus, so do their choruses, which can raise ambient noise levels by up to tens of decibels, for prolonged periods. Multi-species choruses can occur, with varying degrees of temporal and frequency partitioning, or none at all. Australian datasets of underwater noise have been acquired for nearly two decades and multiple fish calling patterns have been detected. Detecting, delineating, and understanding these patterns is non-trivial and a metric relating their contribution to the soundscape with biodiversity or habitat would be an invaluable tool. In recent years, several acoustic indices have been derived, proving useful in the terrestrial domain. Investigation of their application in marine environmental studies has also begun. However, such a plethora of widely varying sources and changing patterns can affect acoustic indices. This paper describes a simple and automatic suite of tools to help identify signals of a wide range of time patterns which are potentially underrepresented or missed by acoustic complexity or biodiversity indices. 2016 Conference Paper http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/80032 10.1121/2.0000286 restricted
spellingShingle Parsons, Miles
Erbe, Christine
McCauley, Robert
McWilliam, J.
Marley, S.
Gavrilov, Alexander
Parnum, Iain
Long-term monitoring of soundscapes and deciphering a usable index: Examples of fish choruses from Australia
title Long-term monitoring of soundscapes and deciphering a usable index: Examples of fish choruses from Australia
title_full Long-term monitoring of soundscapes and deciphering a usable index: Examples of fish choruses from Australia
title_fullStr Long-term monitoring of soundscapes and deciphering a usable index: Examples of fish choruses from Australia
title_full_unstemmed Long-term monitoring of soundscapes and deciphering a usable index: Examples of fish choruses from Australia
title_short Long-term monitoring of soundscapes and deciphering a usable index: Examples of fish choruses from Australia
title_sort long-term monitoring of soundscapes and deciphering a usable index: examples of fish choruses from australia
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/80032