A Field-Ready Playback System for Eco-Acoustic and Settlement Studies

随着人类对海洋利用的不断扩大，人们越来越需要了解自然和人为噪声对声音敏感类群的影响。了解声学生态学至关重要，因为海洋变化的速度以及科学仍在揭示海洋动物如何使用声音进行交流，探测捕食者，寻找猎物和寻找合适的栖息地。为了获得这些知识，需要一种具有成本效益的，持续时间长的工具，使研究人员能够轻松地和实验性地重放声音线索，操纵音景，并在基于现场的实验中引入“噪音”，以解决海洋生态和保护的新问题。这项工作将支持建立和测试一个可扩展的、具有成本效益的、适用于海洋的、持续时间长的声音播放工具。这一工具将使科学家能够收集关于声音如何被各种海洋动物利用和影响的新见解。该研究将重点对珊瑚礁进行试点测试，珊瑚礁是支持数十亿美元生态系统服务的濒危生物多样性中心，并寻求提高年轻珊瑚的吸引力和定居力，作为支持和潜在重建珊瑚礁的方法。该项目将吸收和培训本科生和研究生、年轻技术人员和工程师，包括代表性不足的少数民族，参与开发和测试的各个方面。这项工作旨在自我维持，以便一旦完成，其他科学家和利益攸关方将能够利用声学富集和新问题来支持珊瑚礁的重新开发，并进行以前无法获得的生态系统研究。 这项科学将通过重播音景的beta实验进行试点和优化，以吸引珊瑚幼虫并诱导珊瑚礁定居。 参与的团队将利用对珊瑚礁音景的新认识，他们自己的关键数据和beta系统，以实现这种声学介导的回放和幼虫定居调查工具。该系统的技术组件将是耐用的，并为播放珊瑚礁声音进行了优化，提高了其动态范围，声音传播和各种声音模式。该试点工具将在美属维尔京群岛一个已建立的实地站进行测试和优化，并对音景和社区动态进行多年的测量。额外的测试和用户反馈集成将发生在第2年的新网站。通过这些校准、迭代和测试，该项目将为科学家和利益相关者的工具箱提供一种重要的新的基于自然的仪器，以围绕海洋生态、变化中的海洋、物理海洋学、该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的评估来支持。影响审查标准。

Given human’s expanding use of the ocean, there is increasing need to understand natural and anthropogenic noise impacts to sound-sensitive taxa. Understanding acoustic ecology is vital as given rates of ocean changes and the fact that science is still unraveling how marine animals use sound to communicate, detect predators, seek prey and find suitable habitat. To gain this knowledge there is a need for a cost-effective, extended-duration tool that allows researchers to easily and experimentally replay sound cues, manipulate soundscapes and introduce ‘noise’ in field-based experiments to address new questions in ocean ecology and conservation. This effort will support the build and testing of a scalable, cost-effective, ocean-ready and long-duration sound playback tool. This tool will enable scientists to gather new insight into how sound is used by and impacts diverse marine fauna. The research will focus pilot tests on coral reefs, imperiled hubs of biodiversity that support billions of USD in ecosystem services, and seek to enhance the attraction and settlement of young corals as a method to support and potentially rebuild reefs. The project will incorporate and train undergraduate and graduate students, young technicians, and engineers, including underrepresented minorities, in all aspects of this development and testing. This effort is designed to be self-sustaining so that once it is completed, other scientists and stakeholders will be able to use acoustic enrichment and new questions to support the redevelopment of reefs and conduct previously unobtainable ecosystem studies. The science will be piloted and optimized through beta-experiments replaying soundscapes to attract coral larvae and induce settlement onto reefs. The team involved will leverage the emerging understanding of reef soundscapes, their own key data, and a beta-system, to enable this acoustically-mediated playback and larval settlement investigation tool. The technical components of the system will be durable and optimized for the playback of reef sounds, enhancing its dynamic range, sound propagation, and variety of sound patterns. The pilot tool will be tested and optimized at an established US Virgin Islands field station with years of measurements on soundscapes and community dynamics. Additional testing and user-feedback integrated will occur a new site in Year 2. From these calibrations, iterations and tests, the project will provide an important new natural-based instrument for the toolboxes of scientists and stakeholders to conduct novel acoustics studies surrounding the fields of marine ecology, changing oceans, physical oceanography, and broader basic ocean research.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.