Weds. October 26, 12:30 – 13:30. This event has past you can watch it back here:
Dr. Sarab S. Sethi sss70@cam.ac.uk
Abstract
Anthropogenic pressures are causing ecosystems around the world to change at an increasing rate. Accurate and high-level monitoring of these changes is necessary, yet traditional survey techniques are often taxonomically focused, laborious, or scale poorly.
In this talk we will explore how fully automated eco-acoustic monitoring can address the challenge of accurately mapping large scale ecological changes over long time periods. We will cover rugged recording devices which upload audio in real-time directly from the field (www.bugg.xyz), as well as the state-of-the-art machine learning analyses being developed to make sense of the incoming data.
In addition to covering the technology, we will discuss how eco-acoustic monitoring is being used to solve real ecological challenges; from a tropical forest fragmentation experiment in Malaysian Borneo (SAFE Acoustics http://acoustics.safeproject.net), to a study investigating the composition and dynamics of avian communities in Norway (Sound of Norway).
As eco-acoustic monitoring continues to mature, there will be countless more opportunities for it to contribute to fundamental scientific discovery, evidence-based nature management, and sustainable policy development.
Biography
Dr. Sarab S. Sethi is a Herchel Smith Postdoctoral Research Fellow based within the Cambridge Conservation Initiative. In addition, Dr. Sethi holds a Scientific Advisor position at the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA) and an Honorary Research Fellowship at University College London. Previously, he worked as a Researcher (Forsker) at NINA designing and deploying a pilot nationwide eco-acoustic monitoring network. This followed his PhD and a short postdoc at Imperial College London, where he worked across the Departments of Life Sciences, Mathematics, and Design Engineering.
Dr Sarab Singh Sethi | Department of Plant Sciences (cam.ac.uk)