Using freshwater sounds to identify agricultural practices that sustain stream health

Acoustic monitoring is a low-cost, non-invasive way to track animal behavior and populations over long periods of time. Recent advancements in soundscape ecology and innovations in recording and sound analysis technology have created new opportunities to monitor ecosystem health through high-resolution acoustic recordings. Our project addressed whether characterization of sounds in agricultural settings could be a valuable approach for monitoring farmscape biodiversity, with the ultimate aim to identify and promote sustainable agricultural practices. 

Each year from 2022-24, we deployed 11 to 17 AudioMoth sound recorders in different farm habitats in the region of the Martin Van Buren National Historic Site (near the Hudson River south of Albany, NY) during spring, summer and fall seasons. Recording locations represented different habitats, including wetlands, riparian zones, hedgerows, ponds, orchards and a variety of crop fields. Collaborating with National Park Service managers at the historic site enabled us to understand their ongoing natural resource management goals and priority species. Recordings were made at each site over 5-10 minute intervals every hour, lasting from 10-32 weeks, thus providing large volumes of soundscape data. This allowed us to gather a rich collection of bird and amphibian sounds associated with different crops and nearby wetland and forest patches, and determine how their occurrence varied among habitats and seasonally.