Date: 4th October 2023, 2:00 PM

 

Location: Room 004, Building F1 (Alte Universität) + Zoom

 

Speaker: Dr. Sandra Müller & Dominik Arend, M.Sc. (both Chair of Geobotany, University of Freiburg)

 

Bio: Sandra Müller specialises in vegetation ecology, with a focus on how biodiversity influences ecosystem processes. Since 2014, her special interest is on the role of acoustic diversity within the broader spectrum of biodiversity. She is interested in basic projects for a better understanding of sound's ecological role in landscapes, and she's also involved in adapting ecoacoustic methods for ecosystem monitoring and conservation.

Dominik Arend focuses on the entities of acoustic data and the ecological information it transports. The composition of soundscapes (the acoustic environment) and the relationships between their sources are his main research items. He aims to study how local and regional factors shape soundscapes and their impact on the acoustic community.

 

Abstract: Every habitat has its own acoustic signature. Sounds play an important ecological role in communication among individuals of a species and interspecific interactions. This exchange of acoustic signals happens in the interplay of noises and sounds of the abiotic environment. A variety of information is thus incorporated into the soundscape, such as the composition of the vocalizing species community, day time and seasons, vegetation zones, landscape structure, and land use. Changes due to species decline and climate change can also be recorded acoustically. This talk will present particular acoustic aspects and insights from different ecosystems and introduce „HearTheSpecies”-  a joined DFG project among our ecoacoustic working group and the Chair of Embedded Intelligence for Health Care and Wellbeing, were we hope to improve our analytic toolkit to gain a better understanding on what soundscape can tell us about a local species community and how it interacts with the abiotic (acoustic) environment.