news

This publication, led by Elie Grinfeder, PhD student at the Ecole normale Supérieure and at EAR, reviews the concept of soundscape and, through a functional and source-filter approach, suggests the use of three soundscape categories: the distal soundscape (the spatial and temporal distribution of sounds in a pre-specified area, in relation
to sound propagation effects), the proximal soundscape (collection of propagated sound signals that occurs at a specific position in space) and the perceptual soundscape (individual subjective interpretation of a proximal soundscape). Congratulations to Elie!

We have just started a new project in the French Pyrenees in the Nature Reserve Py. We will monitor orthoptera communities over years to estimate the success of a restoration program in mountain open fields. Check out the project here.

Jérémy who is a post-doc at the ENES lab (Université Jean Monnet, Saint-Etienne) is visiting us for a few weeks. Jérémy works on the automatic monitoring of ptarmigans (Lagopus) with Dr. Frédéric Sèbe.

Second paper related to our project dB@Risoux. Using a convolution neural network, we automatically tracked over a complete year the buzzing sound of flying insects and the drumming sound of woodpeckers and. This revealed function phenology and seasonality in relation with weather. Pollination might be affected by rainfall increase and wood use by temperature rise. The work, which was led by Alexandre Folliot, was published in Science of the Total Environment.

Soyeon is visiting us for a 6-month period. She comes from the Animal Communication lab led by Prof. Yikweon Jang (Ewha Womans University, Seoul, South Korea). During her visit, Soyeon will analyse her acoustic data dealing with urban park connectivity and amphibian population tracking.

Here is the video of a lab talk given by Sylvain Haupert, giving an overview of his work inside EAR research projects.

Publication Landscape Ecology of our first paper related to our long-term project dB@Risoux. We could track the main soundscape components in order to empirically estimate their relative prevalence across seasons. This analysis reveals that anthropogenic noise is a major component of the soundscape of protected habitats, which can dramatically impact local animal behavior and ecology. Congratulations to Elie Grinfeder for his first paper !

Our project dB@Risoux was featured in an ARTE TV documentary about the return of silence during the first COVID lockdown. Check it out at 29′.

Podcasts done by the Parc Naturel Régional du Haut-Jura and Biophonia about our project dB@Risoux.

A short note on acoustic biodiversity co-authored with Bernie Krause and Almo Farina published in a special issue dedicated to biodiversity in Current Biology.

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(21)01199-4