Acoustic indices are responsive to local-scale but not landscape-scale agricultural land use

Abstract

Agricultural land use shapes biodiversity patterns. In the literature, land use and land cover at both local and landscape scales has been shown to be important to understanding variation in biodiversity in agricultural systems including measures of occupancy, abundance, and diversity, with landscape scale processes moderating local patterns. The relative role of these processes in explaining variation in acoustic indices, an increasingly frequent measure of biological and environmental change, remains unknown. To address this gap, we recorded acoustic data by passive sampling for two months across 39 farms in central Kansas, USA with automated recording units. We used these data to calculate eight different acoustic indices. We found that acoustic indices were associated with local land use composition (within 100 m) but not landscape composition (within 1000 m). These data suggest that passive acoustic monitoring may be used explain how local land use shapes the soundscape and perhaps biodiversity, but future research should seek to understand the lack of response to landscape variation.

Keywords

• Agroecology
• Bird
• Great Plains
• Monitoring
• Scale
• Soundscape