Dialling into nature

Michigan-based Prof Stuart Gage is working with a team of scientists in Australia on methods to automatically measure biological diversity with sound.

Prof Gage said the work was based on acoustic monitoring technology developed at Michigan State University, and would be advanced by Queensland University of Technology (QUT) research to intelligently monitor the sounds of diverse environments.

The project will see mobile phone 'Smartphones' placed in the environment to listen for animals such as birds and insects.

'Measuring sound has the potential to revolutionise the way we monitor ecology and environmental change,' Prof Gage said. 'It's like using a stethoscope to measure human health - the microphone is a stethoscope for the environment.'

Prof Gage said sound was relatively easy to measure and contained a great deal of information about the environment. 'The human ear is commonly used to count the number of sound producing animals like amphibians, birds and insects, but it is impossible to simultaneously count them at multiple locations at multiple times of the day,' he said.