DOI: 10.5061/dryad.tmpg4f51x
title: soundscape_IR: A source separation toolbox for exploring acoustic diversity in soundscapes

description: 1. Soundscapes contain rich acoustic information associated with animal
 behaviors, environmental characteristics, and human activities, providing
 opportunities for predicting biodiversity changes and associated drivers.
 However, assessing the diversity of animal vocalizations remains
 challenging due to the interference of environmental and anthropogenic
 noise. A tool for separating sound sources and delineating changes in
 acoustic signals is crucial for an effective assessment of acoustic
 diversity. 2. We present soundscape_IR, an open-source Python toolbox
 dedicated to soundscape information retrieval in which non-negative matrix
 factorization is applied. This toolbox provides algorithms for supervised
 and unsupervised source separation (SS). It also enables the use of a
 snapshot recording for model training and subsequently applying adaptive
 and semi-supervised SS when target species produce sounds with varying
 features and when unseen sound sources are encountered. 3. Our results
 demonstrated that SS could enhance the vocalizations of target species,
 characterize the complexity of vocal repertoires, and investigate the
 spatio-temporal divergence of soundscapes. In tropical forest soundscapes,
 the application of SS effectively detected the rutting vocalizations of
 sika deer and revealed a graded structure in their acoustic
 characteristics. In subtropical estuarine soundscapes, SS automated the
 process of identifying distinct biotic and abiotic sounds, and the result
 uncovered divergent sound compositions between inshore and offshore
 waters. 4. Implementation of SS in soundscape analysis offers a promising
 method for streamlining the assessment of acoustic diversity in diverse
 environments. Future application of SS will open new directions to
 acoustically quantify ecological interactions across individual, species,
 and ecosystem levels.
description: <strong>Tropical Forest Soundscape</strong>: This
 dataset is a collection of tropical forest recordings that contain the
 rutting vocalizations of sika deer (<em>Cervus nippon</em>)
 and sounds produced by diverse soniferous species. Rutting vocalizations
 play a crucial role in the breeding behavior of sika deer and vary among
 individuals. To monitor the population status and behavior of sika deer at
 Sheding Nature Park, Pingtung, Taiwan (21°58′02.7′′N, 120°49′02.4′′E), one
 Song Meter SM4 acoustic recorder (Wildlife Acoustics Inc., Maynard, MA,
 USA) was fixed on a tree at 1.5 m above the ground on November 18, 2017.
 The recorder was scheduled to run one 5-min recording every 15 min, with a
 sampling frequency of 44.1 kHz.
 <strong>Subtropical Estuary Soundscape</strong>: This
 dataset features the underwater recordings of a subtropical estuary in
 western Taiwan waters. Estuaries support diverse marine species, including
 many soniferous fish and marine mammals. Listening to estuary soundscapes
 can help assess soniferous communities and anthropogenic activities. From
 August 26 to August 27, 2018, two recording sites were established in
 Chunggang River Estuary, Taiwan. The first site was located in shallow
 water where the mean depth was 9 m (24°40′48.4′′N, 120°49′07.1′′E),
 whereas the second site was located in relatively deep water where the
 mean water depth was 17.5 m (24°41′32.3′′N 120°48′48.8′′E). The distance
 between the two sites was approximately 1.5 km. At each site, one
 SoundTrap ST300 HF recorder (Ocean Instruments, Auckland, New Zealand) was
 bottom-mounted 1 m above the seafloor and scheduled to record sounds every
 5 min using a sampling frequency of 192 kHz.
description: <strong>Tropical Forest Soundscape</strong>: The SM4
 recorder generated uncompressed audio files (WAV format) with two
 channels. The file name contains information associated with recording
 site and the beginning time of each recording (site_yyyymmdd_HHMMSS.wav).
 For example, KT08_20171118_011500.wav represents the recording obtained
 from the site KT08, the beginning time is November 18, 2017, at 01:15.
 Audio recordings were collected by Shih-Ching Yen and Tzu-Hao
 Lin. <strong>Subtropical Estuary
 Soundscape</strong>: Two folders were provided, one for the audio
 recordings collected from the inshore site and another one for those
 collected from the offshore site. The SoundTrap recorder generated
 lossless compressed single-channel audio files (SUD format). SUD files
 were transformed into uncompressed WAV files by using the Soundtrap Host
 software (Ocean Instruments, NZ). The file name contains information
 associated with the serial number of a recorder and the beginning time of
 each recording (SN.yymmddHHMMSS.wav). For example,
 1208791070.180826091503.wav represents the recording obtained by using the
 Soundtrap #1208791070, the beginning time is August 26, 2018, at 09:15:03.
 The sensitivity is -179.2 dB re 1V/μPa for SoundTrap #1208791070, and
 -178.6 dB re 1V/μPa for SoundTrap #1207963682. Audio recordings were
 collected by Observer Ecological Consultant.