Nature Sub-Journal: The Changing Voice of Spring

An international research team led by the University of East Anglia (UEA) has developed a new technology that combines world-leading citizen scientific bird monitoring data with records of individual species in the wild, reconstructing more than 200,000 people in the past 25 years Soundscapes of locations
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Lead author Dr.
Simon Butler from the School of Biological Sciences at the University of East Anglia explained: "The benefits of exposure to nature are wide-ranging, from improving physical and mental health to increasing the possibility of participating in environmental behaviors
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"Birds’ chirping plays an important role in determining the quality of natural experiences, but the general decline in the number of birds and the response of species distribution to climate change mean that the acoustic properties of natural soundscapes may be changing
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The annual bird population data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey and the Pan-European Common Bird Monitoring Program sites are combined with the records of more than 1,000 bird species from Xeno Canto (an online database of bird song sounds) to reconstruct the historical soundscape
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The acoustic properties of these soundscapes are then quantified, using four indicators to measure the frequency and time distribution of sound waves
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Dr.
Butler commented on the study published today in the journal Nature Communications: “We have found that changes in the composition of bird communities have led to a general decline in the sound diversity and intensity of natural soundscapes
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"These results show that the music in spring is getting quieter and changing less and less, and that one of the basic ways of human contact with nature is chronically declining, which may have a wide-ranging impact on human health and happiness
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He added: “Considering that people mainly hear rather than see birds, the decline in the quality of natural soundscapes may be the mechanism by which the public is most keenly aware of the effects of continued decline in numbers
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Researchers say that the relationship between changes in bird community structure and the resulting soundscape features is not easy to predict
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Dr.
Catriona Morrison, a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of East Anglia, conducted this analysis
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"However, how the initial community structure and the call characteristics of the species complement each other also play an important role in determining how the soundscape changes
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"For example, the disappearance of species that sing rich and complex songs like skylarks or nightingales may have a greater impact on the complexity of the soundscape than the disappearance of husky crow or seagull species
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Dr.
Morrison said: "Unfortunately, we are experiencing a global environmental crisis, and we now know that the reduced connection between man and nature may be one of the reasons for this crisis
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"As we become less and less aware of our natural environment, we also begin to pay attention to or do not care about their deterioration
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This research was funded by the UKRI Natural Environment Research Committee

Journal Reference :

1. Morrison, CA, Auniņš, A.