Assessing ecosystem resilience through the use of ecoacoustics

通过使用生态声学评估生态系统的恢复力

• 批准号: 2607363
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Imperial College London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2021 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2607363
• 关键词: Assessing; ecosystem; resilience; through; use

Tropical rainforests are globally important ecosystems that exert strong influence on global biodiversity, global carbon budgets and global livelihoods. The desirable - and arguably essential - state for a tropical rainforest ecosystem is one that is stable, resilient and sustainable, but there are no methods available to unambiguously quantify these concepts in real-world ecosystems. There are, however, concepts such as critical slowing down (Clements and Ozgul, 2018) that have been demonstrated in laboratory systems (Dai et al., 2012, Drake and Griffen, 2010). Should it be feasible to detect field ecosystem analogues of the metrics recorded in these laboratory, microcosm studies, there is opportunity to develop a robust, early warning system capable of detecting the loss of ecosystem resilience in near real-time.EcoAcoustics - the sound of the environment - is probably the best available option to do this. Acoustics amalgamates all of the noise from all of the species within an ecosystem, and we have demonstrated its ability to quantify ecosystem properties including habitat quality and biodiversity (Sethi et al., 2020). In this project, you will extend this work to examine acoustic data for the temporal signals associated with critical slowing down (Dai et al., 2012): an increase in the size and duration of fluctuations in the acoustic signal. The thesis will have two components. First, you will collect and analyse temporal variability in long-term, continuous acoustic records collected across a primary forest to oil palm plantation habitat gradient in Sabah, Malaysia. Second, you will develop and implement novel field experiments that introduce acoustic disturbances to investigate acoustic variation across a habitat gradient to a standardised disturbance, with a view to experimentally quantifying ecosystem resilience. For both research components, acoustic monitoring will be carried out using devices developed in our lab (Sethi, 2018), which will be further extended by adding multi-microphone arrays. 3D sound analysis and localisation techniques (e.g. beamforming - Van Veen, 1988) will be employed in the time/frequency domain in order to determine the directivity and diffuseness of the various elements of the recorded soundscape (Pulkki, 2007). This information will then be integrated with the other acoustic data and facilitate the measurement of the temporal variability and the quantification of ecosystem resilience. Furthermore, the 3D audio recording will allow to re-create the acoustic field of the original environment in the lab through loudspeaker arrays, and to use these for further soundfield analyses in a controlled and replicable environment.

热带雨林是全球重要的生态系统，对全球生物多样性、全球碳预算和全球生计产生重大影响。热带雨林生态系统的理想状态是稳定、有弹性和可持续的，但没有任何方法可以在现实世界的生态系统中明确地量化这些概念。然而，有一些概念，如临界减速(Clements和Ozgul，2018)已经在实验室系统中得到证明(Dai等人，2012，Drake和Griffen，2010)。如果可以检测到与这些实验室、微观研究中记录的指标类似的野外生态系统，就有机会开发一个强大的早期预警系统，能够近乎实时地检测生态系统弹性的丧失。生态声学--环境的声音--可能是实现这一目标的最佳可用选择。声学融合了生态系统内所有物种的所有噪音，我们已经展示了它量化生态系统属性的能力，包括栖息地质量和生物多样性(Sethi等人，2020年)。在本项目中，您将扩展这项工作，以检查与关键减速相关的时间信号的声学数据(Dai等人，2012年)：声学信号中波动的大小和持续时间的增加。本论文由两部分组成。首先，您将收集和分析在马来西亚沙巴州原始森林到油棕榈种植园生境梯度上收集的长期、连续的声波记录的时间变异性。其次，您将开发和实施引入声学干扰的新颖现场实验，以研究从栖息地梯度到标准化干扰的声学变化，以期通过实验量化生态系统的弹性。对于这两个研究部分，将使用我们实验室开发的设备(Sethi，2018)进行声学监测，并将通过增加多麦克风阵列进一步扩展。将在时间/频率域中使用3D声音分析和定位技术(例如，波束形成-Van Veen，1988)，以确定所记录的声景的各种元素的方向性和扩散性(Pulkki，2007)。然后，这些信息将与其他声学数据结合起来，便于测量时间变异性和量化生态系统复原力。此外，3D音频记录将允许通过扬声器阵列重建实验室中原始环境的声场，并在受控和可复制的环境中使用这些声场进行进一步的声场分析。