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CAIRNGORMS NATURE: Tuning in to nature’s wall of noise





PIPISTRELLE BAT: Pipistrelle Bats and other species in the national park have been helping to give an in-sight into local ecosystem.
PIPISTRELLE BAT: Pipistrelle Bats and other species in the national park have been helping to give an in-sight into local ecosystem.

Biodiversity is a bit of a modern buzzword, and I come across many folk who are not quite sure what it means.

Simply put, it’s the number of different species of plant or animal that can be found living in a particular area or habitat.

When the number is high that’s good, but when it is low or lowering that’s when we talk about biodiversity loss.

We are in the middle of a biodiversity crisis in Scotland and that affects us in the national park too and we need to find ways to reverse the decline.

Much of my day job revolves around documenting biodiversity as I work on the Cairngorms Nature Index, one of the nature objectives in the Cairngorms National Park Authority’s partnership plan.

The index is about recording a baseline of where we are now with biodiversity and what species we have in the habitats of the national park so that we can monitor any changes going forward.

There are lots of ways to do this and we work with many partner organisations and volunteers to count and document various habitats and landscapes but one of the most exciting new ways is to use bioacoustics.

Bioacoustics is the study of sound in the natural world especially the sounds produced by animals.

The recording of sounds can give us an idea of what species are present in a location, and how biologically rich the area is.

As technology has developed it’s becoming more common to see it being used for biological recording.

This year, the CNPA, NatureScot and Cairngorms Connect partnered with landowners to put recording equipment at 50 sites across the national park.

The frequencies were set to record bird song and bat calls - both species that are instrumental in telling us more about the wider state of the ecosystem.

Using bioacoustics has several advantages over traditional ‘boots-on-the-ground’ counting, it is non-invasive causing no disturbance to wildlife - beside occasional visits to change batteries and download data – and recorders continuously collect data, unlike human efforts which are generally time-limited.

This year all the units were placed on open moorland sites and the results will act as a baseline, with repeat surveys every five years to show us how biodiversity is changing.

This is particularly important when we consider the wider environmental changes to how the land is managed and climate change.

In between the moorland site recordings, we will also target other ecosystems – our woodlands, the high plateaus of the Cairngorms, wetland sites and our agricultural landscapes.

The data generated is also being used in conjunction with cutting-edge analysis techniques.

Working with scientific research bodies and academics we are hoping the data can train automated recognition software to speed up the process of determining what species are present, and for some species perhaps even how many based on the frequency and distance of calls.

For species that are very vocal, like capercaillie and black grouse, we could also use the techniques to monitor lek sites without disturbance.

Developing this project is a collaborative effort and as we look to build on our work so far, we want to share the findings as they become available.

If nothing else, on a mid-winters day the opportunity to listen back to a dawn chorus of lapwings, grouse and skylarks is a tonic to us all.

Adam Fraser is monitoring ecologist with the Cairngorms bioacoustics project.


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