Field Bioacoustics and Soundscape Ecology
Students will gain hands-on experience in bioacoustic research, including; concepts behind animals' sound production and hearing mechanisms, skills for deploying acoustic sensors, and data analysis. Lectures cover concepts in acoustics, soundscapes, and digital sound signal processing. Students will deploy acoustic sensors and conduct field experiments, then analyze collected data in computer-lab sessions. Focus is on Passive Acoustic Monitoring, the non-invasive recording of sounds in an environment (soundscapes) with microphones (land) or hydrophones (underwater). Terrestrial field work targets seabirds, while opportunistic recordings may be made of other vocalizing animals, including mammals, fishes, and invertebrates. Students will study the contributions of anthropogenic sounds (human-made) to natural soundscapes. Field -based acoustic playback experiments will be conducted to study how different properties of gull vocalizations influence gull behavior.
Topics
- Deploy and recover passive acoustic sensors (microphones, hydrophones) in terrestrial and aquatic habitats.
- Analyze and visualize bioacoustic data (soundscapes, animal vocalizations) using software commonly used by bioacoustics researchers.
- Conduct acoustic playback experiments in the field and measure animal (e.g., herring gull) behavioral responses to sound.
- Explain how animals across multiple taxa (e.g., mammals, birds, fishes) hear and produce sounds, and appreciate the diverse roles that sounds play in ecology.
- Apply fundamental physical acoustic, biological, and ecological concepts to interpret bioacoustic data and results.
Official roster learning outcomes
Prerequisites & course information
one semester of college level biology, or instructor permission.
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗2026-2027