Jessica L. Cappadonna

The distribution and protection of intertidal habitats in Australia

Abstract Shorebirds have declined severely across the East Asian—Australasian Flyway. Many species rely on intertidal habitats for foraging, yet the distribution and conservation status of these habitats across Australia remain poorly understood. Here, we utilised freely available satellite imagery to produce the first map of intertidal habitats across Australia. We estimated a minimum intertidal area of 9856 km2, with Queensland and Western Australia supporting the largest areas. Thirty-nine percent of intertidal habitats were protected in Australia, with some primarily within marine protected areas (e.g. Queensland) and others within terrestrial protected areas (e.g. Victoria). Three percent of all intertidal habitats were protected by both marine and terrestrial protected areas. To achieve conservation targets, protected area boundaries must align more accurately with intertidal habitats. Shorebirds use intertidal areas to forage and supratidal areas to roost, so a coordinated management approach is required to account for movement of birds between terrestrial and marine habitats. Ultimately, shorebird declines are occurring despite high levels of habitat protection in Australia. There is a need for a concerted effort both nationally and internationally to map and understand how intertidal habitats are changing, and how habitat conservation can be implemented more effectively.

Calls from the Wild: Engaging Citizen Scientist with Animal Sounds

Sound allows people to intimately relate to nature. When people search for wildlife they often rely on their expert knowledge to recognise animal calls. The process of learning these calls involves social engagement and repeated identification in situ. Rare, cryptic, and migratory animals, however, are difficult to hear when people are only at a given location for minutes or hours. This makes many species difficult to study on a large scale, further confounded because human presence may disturb individual animals and reduce their likelihood of detection. Acoustic monitoring has great potential to engage people with animal calls. It can reveal hidden subtleties of animal lives and allow the health of populations to be monitored over long periods. Here, we explore new ways to engage people with natural sounds. We begin with an exploration of the artefacts and practices of birdwatchers, and then online citizen scientists (voluntary contributors to scientific research). Next, we consider how these practices can extend to design novel, interactive user interfaces for people to listen to calls from the wild and make ecological discoveries. \

Collaborative Exploration and Sensemaking of Big Environmental Sound Data

Many ecologists are using acoustic monitoring to study animals and the health of ecosystems. Technological advances mean acoustic recording of nature can now be done at a relatively low cost, with minimal disturbance, and over long periods of time. Vast amounts of data are gathered yielding environmental soundscapes which requires new forms of visualization and interpretation of the data. Recently a novel visualization technique has been designed that represents soundscapes using dense visual summaries of acoustic patterns. However, little is known about how this visualization tool can be employed to make sense of soundscapes. Understanding how the technique can be best used and developed requires collaboration between interface, algorithm designers and ecologists. We empirically investigated the practices and needs of ecologists using acoustic monitoring technologies. In particular, we investigated the use of the soundscape visualization tool by teams of ecologists researching endangered species detection, species behaviour, and monitoring of ecological areas using long duration audio recordings. Our findings highlight the opportunities and challenges that ecologists face in making sense of large acoustic datasets through patterns of acoustic events. We reveal the characteristic processes for collaboratively generating situated accounts of natural places from soundscapes using visualization. We also discuss the biases inherent in the approach. Big data from nature has different characteristics from social and informational data sources that comprise much of the World Wide Web. We conclude with design implications for visual interfaces to facilitate collaborative exploration and discovery through soundscapes.

The Ambient Birdhouse: Bringing Birds Inside to Learn About Birds Outside

We demonstrate a technology to explore the problem of the disconnect between people and nature, the Ambient Birdhouse. Although people are surrounded by flora and fauna, nature is often hidden and difficult to learn about. Birds are active outside when many people are indoors, seen but not heard, or heard but not seen. So, can technologies play a role in reconnecting us to and through nature? This project researches how to learn about local birds in a non-intrusive, fun calm and engaging manner. The Ambient Birdhouse sits inside the house and plays media of local birds - sometimes giving clues about them. Bird houses are connected. You can share bird media from your phone of your own sightings, challenging a neighbour to identify them. Known calls are interspersed with environmental sound to foster listening and developing an ear for local birds. The Ambient Birdhouse follows principles of ambient interaction. It poses the design research challenge of how to engage people in a gentle, social way over time to build awareness of nature, bringing it back into our lives.

Birdsound: enticing urban dwellers to engage with local birds around their home

Many projects seek to engage urban dwellers to learn about local birds. However, many of these projects require some background knowledge that can be difficult to obtain independently. Our project explores how to make engaging with and learning about local birds easier. To do this, we designed and developed BirdSound, a device that engages people to record nature sounds and learn to identify bird species by sight and sound. We conducted contextual interviews with six people living in an urban environment, who were curious but not experienced in birdwatching. These interviews aided in attaining present frame of knowledge held by each participant. Then, we explored how these participants interacted with BirdSound in their homes. BirdSound sparked participants to recount experiences with the device, social interactions and knowledge of birds. BirdSound use required intense focus, and we can envisage more ambient approaches that also support more social forms of learning.

Mapped distribution of intertidal habitats in Australia between 1999 and 2014, link to data in ArcGIS format (29 MB)

Mapping of distribution of intertidal habitats in Australia, and identification of percentage of marine and terrestrial protected areas.