Signal processing basics applied to Ecoacoustics

Abstract

Ecoacoustics is a research field that has attracted attention of researchers from areas as diverse as ecology, biology, engineering, and human sciences, to cite a few. Ecoacoustics studies the sounds that emanates from the environments, by gaining insights of landscape dynamics from acoustic patterns and particularities at different places. With recent advance in technology, it is common to obtain sound datasets recorded 24-h a day for several months. The analysis of these long-term sound recordings represents several challenges. Investigators already involved in acoustic are familiar with signal processing methods, which are essential tools for sound analysis. However, in general beginners interested in Ecoacoustics do not share this background formation. The present work illustrates basic topics of digital signal processing in a comprehensible style, and an effective pipeline for long-term sound explorative data analysis (EDA) is presented. Finally, the described signal processing fundamentals are applied for EDA of 1-month underwater acoustic data recorded in a Brazilian marine protected area. The Matlab codes used for the analysis will be available as supplementary material.