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The sound of management: Acoustic monitoring for agricultural industries

2018; Elsevier BV; Volume: 96; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.ecolind.2018.09.029

1872-7034

Brendan Doohan, Susan Fuller, Stuart Parsons, Erin E. Peterson,

Marine animal studies overview

Global biodiversity is declining rapidly while the human population grows exponentially. This creates pressure for agricultural industries to improve productivity, but also demonstrate that on-farm management actions are minimising impacts on biodiversity. However, the costs and logistical considerations of traditional biodiversity assessment methods are beyond the scope of many agricultural industries and landholders. Our goal was to evaluate the potential for acoustic biodiversity monitoring in agricultural systems. We assessed a range of species-specific and more general acoustic indices using five key criteria (i.e. relevance to industry, diagnostic capability, spatio-temporal scale, logistical feasibility, and utility as a biodiversity surrogate) to determine whether they were suitable for assessing biodiversity outcomes for agricultural industries and individual farmers. Based on these assessment criteria, species-specific or guild-specific acoustic bioindicators that are processed using automatic recognisers are more appropriate for biodiversity monitoring when the goal is to assess industry- or farm-specific impacts on biodiversity. If there is no need to establish a diagnostic link between on-farm management practices and biodiversity, then acoustic indices are more logistically feasible to use and may more accurately reflect overall biodiversity. We also recommend using birds and bats for acoustic monitoring in agricultural systems because they are relatively easy to monitor, exhibit peaks in activity around dusk or dawn, and are not necessarily water dependent. We believe that acoustic monitoring has the potential to deliver consistent, repeatable results at a relatively low cost compared to traditional biodiversity monitoring, which will allow individual farmers and agricultural industries to more easily track their sustainability performance. This becomes even more critical as we consider the increasing role that agricultural regions will have in sustaining the world's rapidly declining biodiversity.