Scientists from five Australian universities have launched a ‘google map for sounds’ that will continuously record the calls of wildlife for five years.
Four hundred solar-powered audio recorders will be placed across 100 sites in remote parts of Australia to create a soundscape that will mark environmental changes, part of the National Acoustic Observatory Project.
Lead Researcher Professor Paul Roe, from the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, says “the galaxy of sounds” would be freely available in a cloud on the internet.
Professor Roe hopes it will be accessed by the general public, saying “For example, we will have citizen science projects where we can kind of search for a particular animal within the soundscape.”
“People can use it to explore the environment to understand what is happening, how does the sound change.”