During April/May 2024, consistent with SERF’s other monitoring programs, and the need to track progress scientifically on this project, I decided to initially establish 1-2 trail cameras on site – as phenocams (vegetation change cameras) – and acoustic monitoring.
Acoustic Monitoring
I determined in consultation with Dr. David Tucker that initially 1 Solar powered BioAcoustic Recorder (Solar BAR) should be deployed near the bottom of the passive plot where it meets the active plot – to record continuous audio data for later analysis – given these devices’ detection radii is quite wide on open pasture (>100m): The choice of this hardware is consistent with the equipment used by the Australian Acoustic Observatory which Dr. David Tucker is a member of – ensuring he will be able to help identify the call sounds.
Aerial Monitoring
This would be a mixture of input from the QUT REF team who fly 35mm quality cameras – and my own Mavic 2 Zooms. Initial photos were taken on 24/4/24 showing some of the area put aside for the artwork.