There will be an interesting piece coming out in a pretty high level
nature publication sometime later this year that deals with measuring
aspects of the biophony that shows how diversity can be precisely
tracked over time, Robert. Also, a couple of PhD dissertations: One
from Purdue and another from Harvard. These will illustrate the beauty
of the system.
Bernie
On Mar 13, 2009, at 9:25 AM, Robert Heckendorn wrote:
> --- In Bernie Krause <>
> wrote:
> >
> > Unusual density of specific bird species and seasonal shift in their
> > presence have been noted throughout N. America, Robert. We are
> > currently completing a paper for peer-reviewed publication on the
> > subject which, we hope, will see print next Fall in a major
> scientific
> > journal. It will address the changes not only in population density,
> > but also diversity and richness. Moscow is a lovely rural area and
> it
> > is not surprising that the shift is occurring there, also. In our
> area
> > -- N. California -there were literally thousands of American Robins
> > through our property over a period of 48 hours in mid-January.
> >
> > On the opposite side of the coin, frog density has fallen off
> greatly
> > in other areas such as the valley in which we live. Except for an
> > occasional individual, hardly any vox this year. Since January,
> we've
> > been recording every few weeks at a spot usually pretty rich with
> many
> > species of birds (32 as Kevin and Martyn can attest) but even though
> > the weather has been spectacular, the density and diversity at that
> > spot has fallen off to the point yesterday, that it was almost
> silent
> > at dawn...the first year in two decades of recording, there.
> >
> > Bernie
>
> Very interesting and sad.
>
> This would be a great if perhaps not precise way to track diversity
> by just measuring the sound. A dramatic if emotional representation
> of the loss of individuals might be made by piecing the 20 years of
> sound together in someway to allow one to listen to the decay of
> diversity and density over 20 years. Not sure how that could be done
> to be truly representative. 20 years squeezed into 2 minutes might
> be quite striking and drive home a point.
>
> | Robert Heckendorn | "The belief that there is only
> | | one truth, and that oneself is
> | http://marvin.ibest.uidaho.edu/~heckendo | in possession of it, is
> the root
> | Computer Science Dept, Univ. of Idaho | of all evil in the world."
> | Moscow, Idaho, USA 83844-1010 | -- Max Born
>
>
>
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