Applications - Soundscape Ecology: Principles, Patterns, Methods and Applications - page 266

of surveying abundance and migration, and good knowledge of behavioral traits
and knowledge of the acoustic propagation and ambient noise, as suggested by
Cato et al. ( 2006 ).
10.4 A Sonic Observatory
Many natural phenomena produce direct or indirect sounds and the analysis of such
sounds can be extended not only to animal and human vocalizations but also to
precipitation intensity, air turbulence and wind, and soil wetting. From biophonies
it is possible to extract much information such as community complexity, species
composition, acoustic activity, masking and overlap phenomena correlation, etc. A
sonic observatory can be located in natural environments, at ecotones, and in urban
areas as well. The sonic recording could be scaled according to hours, days, weeks,
months, seasons, and years. It is possible to select the daily time (dawn, dusk,
midday, night, etc.) and adopt instruments at different sensitivities, operating
different sampling techniques and processing methods.
A sonic observatory may have as target global warming, changes in land use, the
effect of agriculture, the way pests are spreading, and the value of an environmental
bank.
Acoustic cues can be used to identify different species and species density,
species behavior and localization of individuals.
Acoustic monitoring does not mean only collecting information of the vocal
activity of birds, frogs, insects, and some mammals but can be used to measure road
traffic, weather, soil moisture, streams, and a river hydraulic regime.
An observatory can record sudden changes in the environment such as the
quantitative variation of frog choruses in a pond, and data can be shared in the web.
Different methods are available today to collect and store acoustic data from
nature via data loggers (e.g., SM1/2, Wildlife Acoustics) or with autonomous
wireless sensors. The first approach is simple but requires fieldwork, maintenance
of the device, changes of batteries, and downloading of data. The use of autono-
mous wireless sensors when powered adequately (e.g., solar panels) allow handling
data for longer time. The weak point of these methods is their security, because such
devices that remain for a long time in the field can be damaged by extreme weather
events and wild animals, stolen, or simply destroyed (Planitz et al. 2009 ).
10.5 Mapping Quiet Areas
The representation of a soundscape means to fix on maps most of the elements that
produce sounds (Papadimitriou et al. 2009 ; Mazaris et al. 2009 ).
If we consider the sound as composed of local sonic information, the distribution
of sonic sources can be used to design sonic maps. The actual sonic maps are based