SPECTROGRAM

Siang/Noon

Lokasi: Hutan Ulin, Kabupaten/District Mungku Baru, Kalimantan Tengah/Central Kalimantan

Jam Perekaman/recording time:  12.00

Spesies yang dapat didengar/audible species:

 

 

You are currently listening to the Biophony of Ulin Forest at noontime. Bernie Krause (US), a sound designer and soundscape ecologist, introduced the term Biophony. When he started to record natural sounds, he was fascinated by the vocalizations of animals and how they build up a sound score, comparable to an orchestra. He defines the word biophony as a collection of sounds of animals in one specific location.

A spectrogram is a visual presentation of the frequencies of a sound as it changes in time. When we look at the spectrogram of the biophony of a tropical forest, it is very interesting to see that each species occupies its own range of frequencies, so it can be heard and doesn’t overlap with other species.

This is why a spectrogram of a biophony provides complex and in-depth information about the diversity of species in an area and is an important tool for measuring the biodiversity of an ecosystem. It is an imprint of a specific location at a specific time.

Above is an image of a spectrogram of the midday recording you are listening to. It shows that during this hour the dominant species are cicadas and crickets.