{"id":7080,"date":"2019-10-11T02:30:10","date_gmt":"2019-10-11T02:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.birds.cornell.edu\/ccb\/?p=7080"},"modified":"2021-07-15T19:55:10","modified_gmt":"2021-07-15T19:55:10","slug":"making-waves-with-sound-in-borneo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.birds.cornell.edu\/ccb\/making-waves-with-sound-in-borneo\/","title":{"rendered":"Making waves with sound in Borneo"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Rungan
Rungan landscape situated in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia (Google Maps)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

This summer, I traveled to the far-away island of Borneo to practice and promote the use of sound for studying and solving some of Indonesia\u2019s biggest conservation challenges. Since 2018, I have been conducting bioacoustics research within the 135,000-hectare Rungan landscape in Central Kalimantan, most of which \u2014 despite housing incredible biodiversity, including the largest unprotected population of Bornean orangutans \u2014 is earmarked for logging and oil-palm or wood-pulp plantation conversion. Indigenous Dayak communities inhabit these areas as well, where they make their livings through small-scale mining, fishing, farming, and collecting non-timber forest products. The challenge there is to develop a conservation plan that incorporates the values and needs of local people and to support sustainable exploitation of environmental resources. To accomplish this, I\u2019ve teamed up with some exceptional people and institutions to study endangered wildlife, train conservation practitioners, and connect with young people in local communities \u2014 all of this using the power of bioacoustics!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Building research capacity & conservation partnerships<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To kick off the field season, my collaborators and I organized a multi-stakeholder outreach and engagement event aimed to expand the breadth and promote the findings of our conservation research program in the Rungan landscape. \u200bOn the first day, scientists and practitioners from Indonesia, England, and the U.S. spoke about our diverse perspectives on and approaches to conservation, including the potential for bioacoustics research to document rare and endangered wildlife and identify conservation priorities. On day two, we hosted training workshops covering diverse research approaches to conservation, including bioacoustics, ethnography, and habitat monitoring. Our group learned the basic theories and key tools for bioacoustics research, took a field trip to a degraded urban forest to deploy a SWIFT recorder, practiced identifying target species from sound recordings in Raven, and formed a bioacoustics working group to promote capacity development and future research collaboration across diverse conservation challenges in Indonesia. We finished the program with an inspiring discussion among all participants \u2014 representing universities, national and regional governments, NGO’s, local communities, the private sector, and media \u2014 about the value of integrating multiple disciplines and values to develop conservation plans. The group expressed great enthusiasm about the idea of formalizing this event into an annual meeting \u2014 a great idea!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    Workshop participants learn how to deploy SWIFT recorder (photo by Borneo Nature Foundation)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/li>
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    The inspiring teachers, facilitators, and participants from Indonesia and abroad (photo by Borneo Nature Foundation)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/li><\/ul><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Studying the sounds of Borneo\u2019s forests & freshwater habitats<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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      Playback team sets the speaker height and orientation (photo by Wendy Erb)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/li>
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      Local research staff member, Rido, climbs a tree to mount a pulley for the speaker (photo by Wendy Erb)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/li>
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      Speaker raised to 10 meters in the canopy to play gibbon songs and orangutan long calls (photo by Wendy Erb)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/li><\/ul><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

      During the second phase of my trip, I got into the really fun stuff \u2014 fieldwork!! And I was beyond excited to team up with a bird whiz, my esteemed colleague Nick Boyd, whose encyclopedic knowledge about Borneo\u2019s birds\u2019 sounds is astounding. Nick and I worked together to train local field staff and students at the Borneo Nature Foundation\u2019s Mungku Baru and Sebangau field stations to identify birds by sight and sound in the field and to recognize the spectrograms of their sounds using Raven. We have started reviewing sound recordings from the last twelve months in the hopes of documenting spatial and temporal variation in target bird species\u2019 presence and behavior. I also worked to document some of Borneo\u2019s underwater life in several small rivers and forest pools surrounding our research camp using a hydrophone and SWIFT recorder. We hope to make important discoveries about the acoustic behavior of Borneo\u2019s freshwater fish \u2014 a vast and yet unexplored area of research. We are excited to continue to develop new studies of the spectacular avifauna and piscifauna in the Rungan landscape in the near future!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      \"Bioacoustics
      Bioacoustics research staff member, Rido, sets up a SWIFT and hydrophone to record some of Borneo\u2019s freshwater habitats (photo by Wendy Erb)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

      Let me tell you about the REALLY fun stuff from this trip \u2014 playbacks! I conducted a series of playback experiments designed to test the transmission of gibbon and orangutan long calls across different heights, habitats, and times of day. My team included local research staff, students and faculty from local universities, and volunteers from Europe who came out for two weeks to support the Borneo Nature Foundation\u2019s research activities at the field site. Together, we traversed the 900-hectare area for two straight weeks (11-12 hours\/day) to reach our playback targets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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