‘It’s sort of a blueprint’

Photo Credit: Kristin Brunk

What happens if a bird sings in the forest and no one is there to hear it?

If it’s in the Sierra Nevada, chances are a microphone placed by researchers from Cornell University and the University of Wisconsin will be listening. 

A vast network of audio recorders now covers almost 40% of the mountain range in California. They transmit groundbreaking bird-tracking data back to scientists for a practical wildfire study, according to Phys.org. 

Here’s how it works. A joint team from Cornell’s conservation bioacoustics lab and UW partnered with the U.S. Forest Service and several other West Coast schools. It placed enough microphones to cover 6 million acres of forest and gathered over 700,000 hours of tape featuring all kinds of birdsong, Phys.org explained. 

In the lab, they ran the recordings through BirdNET, which is powered by artificial intelligence. It can recognize distinct species just from hearing a snippet of sound. The technology was developed by Cornell ornithologists and Chemnitz University of Technology in Germany. With this method, the team analyzed the population levels of spotted owls, woodpeckers, and eight other key birds that reflect the forest’s health, per Phys.org.

Those findings are already pretty useful for birders, conservation efforts, and more research. Plus, getting such a large dataset this way was far more cost-effective than manual observation would have been, researchers said.

But the team did not stop there. It set out to apply its bird presence data to other variables, such as forest density and canopy height. These are the kind of traits that forest managers rely on when strategically removing foliage or running a controlled burn to prevent the spread of wildfires and restore forests. 

Yet managers are not always equipped to make those decisions with biodiversity in mind. Now, they can just look at a detailed map informed by hours of birdsong and see where certain species are likely to live, according to Phys.org.

As global temperatures rise, devastating fires are becoming more frequent. They pose intense and long-lasting dangers to both humans and wildlife. With this kind of applicable research, those on the front lines can work to prevent fires and protect habitats at the same time.

“It’s sort of a blueprint for how monitoring birdsongs and calls can inform management,” lead author and Cornell postdoctoral research associate Kristin Brunk said, per Phys.org. “I’m really hoping that we’ll hear from other researchers who are trying to do similar things.”

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“Within the Sierra Nevada, I think this is really going to enhance the way that forest management works,” Brunk added.

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