Seventh Field Trip to Alice Holt Forest
Photo: Streamer I Giorgio in front of the small pond near the Alice Holt Forest hub area.
On Tuesday, 23rd of July, Luigi and I went to Alice Holt Forest on our seventh field trip to find a bioacoustically relevant location for Streamer I Giorgio. The original location of this streamer was in a large meadow in front of a gorgeous chestnut tree (see figure below), in an area with plenty of sun for the solar panel to feed the streamer. However, we did not find the streaming acoustically appealing and, in turn, the planned daily subsample of 5-minute audio recordings.
During today’s visit, we wanted to explore a few locations in search of a promising soundscape with birds and amphibians. In particular, we planned to investigate the area of Lodge Pond (yet we were suspicious about the noise from the nearby road) and the small pond in front of the Alice Holt Visitor Centre.
We have been discussing with the team what a bioacoustically relevant spot could sound like. Although we admit that silence will generally be present when listening to the forest, we would expect some degree of biodiversity (e.g. bird songs, grasshopper chirps, mosquito buzzes…), which should be identifiable from listening to the live audio streaming at certain times of the day and the audio recordings at key moments of the day and night.
Audio recordings in the Lodge Pond
I went to the Lodge Pond at about 9.30 in the morning. I recorded two samples: one facing a forest with the pond at the back, and a second sample facing the pond. Our guess was confirmed: the road was constantly present (especially with the recording facing the pond), but the human activity was also intense (e.g. visitors walking their dogs).
Streamer I Giorgio in the small pond near the visitor centre
With Luigi, we discussed the above recordings while looking at the spectrograms over coffee at the Alice Holt Cafe. We agreed that the Lodge Pond is too noisy for what the project expects as a natural soundscape.
We then moved to set up Streamer I Giorgio in the new small pond as the potential site for the continuous live stream of a natural soundscape. The Forestry England’s Alice Holt Forest team suggested this site. Before that, we went to the Large Meadow near the Lodge Pond to collect the custom waterproof box built by Luigi, which was going to be used for Streamer II Paula and planned to be set up next week. The survival of the box was proof that the box was resilient to water!
As part of the set-up of Streamer I Giorgio, we then went to charge the EcoFlow battery in the Alice Holt Activity Centre using a common AC cable to get it ready for the new launch of Streamer I. While charging the unit, we had lunch.
At 2pm we set up Streamer I Giorgio at the new location. We were happy to discover that the O2 SIM card has coverage in the area. We discussed the optimal location of the solar panel. It should not face north, but a good semicircle was covered by trees. We decided to face the pond for reflections facing est.
What’s next
We are planning to monitor the soundscape for a week and then decide if this is the correct spot. We also will monitor if placing the EcoFlow solar panel under the canopy still works.
Next time, we will set up Streamer II Paula next to Pete’s installation, which will be updated. We also left for the next time to mount a trolley that we will use for maintenance of battery charging if need be. This field trip was useful to turn our attention to the sonic dimension of the natural soundscape, which is a fundamental part of the project so that we can create one year of meaningful natural soundscape recordings.