This dataset contains audio files for Ti Tree East site. The site was established in 2012 at Pine Hill Station, near Alice Springs. Pine Hill is a functioning cattle station that has been in operation for longer than 50 years. The site is a mosaic of the primary semi-arid biomes of central Australia: grassy mulga woodland and Corymbia/Triodia savanna. The woodland is characterised by a mulga (Acacia aneura) canopy. The soil is red sand overlying an 8 m deep water table. Elevation of the site is 553 m above sea level, and the terrain is flat. Mean annual precipitation at the nearby (30 km to the south) Bureau of Meteorology station is 306 mm.
In 2012 an acoustic recorder was set up in hummock grassland to collect audio data for a total of 12 hours per day, split between six hours around dawn and six hours around dusk. The recording schedule aimed at capturing morning and evening bird choruses while minimizing memory and battery requirements. A long-term spectrogram has been generated for each audio file to aid in data exploration. The sensor also recorded temperature, minimum- maximum- and mean-sound pressure levels.
Acoustic indices and false colour spectrograms were created for the recordings. Acoustic indices are summaries of the distribution of the acoustic energy in a recording. They are particularly useful for the analysis of long-term recordings of the environment and can be used to identify sound sources of interest, characterise the soundscape, aid in the assessment of fauna biodiversity, monitor temporal trends and track environmental changes. False colour spectrograms are visual representation of individual acoustic indices or combination of multiple indices. They can highlight the presence of specific sound sources, e.g. birds, insects or weather events, providing a tool for navigating long-term recordings.
Data are made available through the data link. For downloading large amount of data, please follow these instructions How to download TERN's acoustic data in bulk
