Short Wave What Does A Healthy Rainforest Sound Like?
Aug 26, 2020
Sarab Sethi, a postdoctoral researcher at Imperial College London, delves into the revolutionary concept of using sound to assess ecosystem health. He shares his immersive experience in Borneo's rainforest, capturing wildlife sounds while installing solar panels. The conversation explores innovative machine learning techniques for tracking biodiversity through audio monitoring. Sethi highlights how these acoustic indicators can reveal the vitality of rainforests, helping to identify illegal activities and early signs of environmental decline.
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Sarab's Rainforest Experience
- Sarab Sethi, a city-dweller, initially felt overwhelmed by the cacophony of the Borneo rainforest at night.
- The sheer volume of insect and frog sounds was a novel sensory experience.
Eco-acoustics and AI
- Sethi's research uses sound and AI to assess ecosystem health.
- This offers a potentially more efficient alternative to traditional methods like point counts.
Traditional Monitoring Methods
- Traditional ecosystem health evaluation methods, like point counts for bird biodiversity, are thorough.
- They involve noting down every bird seen or heard over 24 hours, but they are also time-consuming.