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10<title>Nashville Autonomous Recording + BirdNET Project | Emily J. Hudson</title></head><body id=top data-spy=scroll data-offset=70 data-target=#TableOfContents class=page-wrapper data-wc-page-id=c31197a06c6d4660cef940131bbf748a>
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10<aside class=search-modal id=search><div class=container><section class=search-header><div class="row no-gutters justify-content-between mb-3"><div class=col-6><h1>Search</h1></div><div class="col-6 col-search-close"><a class=js-search href=# aria-label=Close><i class="fas fa-times-circle text-muted" aria-hidden=true></i></a></div></div><div id=search-box><input name=q id=search-query placeholder=Search... autocapitalize=off autocomplete=off autocorrect=off spellcheck=false type=search class=form-control aria-label=Search...></div></section><section class=section-search-results><div id=search-hits></div></section></div></aside><div class=page-header><nav class="navbar navbar-expand-lg navbar-light compensate-for-scrollbar" id=navbar-main><div class=container-xl><div class="d-none d-lg-inline-flex"><a class=navbar-brand href=/>Emily J. Hudson</a></div><button type=button class=navbar-toggler data-toggle=collapse data-target=#navbar-content aria-controls=navbar aria-expanded=false aria-label="Toggle navigation"> 11<span><i class="fas fa-bars"></i></span></button><div class="navbar-brand-mobile-wrapper d-inline-flex d-lg-none"><a class=navbar-brand href=/>Emily J. Hudson</a></div><div class="navbar-collapse main-menu-item collapse justify-content-start" id=navbar-content><ul class="navbar-nav d-md-inline-flex"><li class=nav-item><a class=nav-link href=/#about><span>About</span></a></li><li class=nav-item><a class=nav-link href=/#projects><span>Projects</span></a></li><li class=nav-item><a class=nav-link href=/#publications><span>Publications</span></a></li><li class=nav-item><a class=nav-link href=/#tags><span>Topics</span></a></li></ul></div><ul class="nav-icons navbar-nav flex-row ml-auto d-flex pl-md-2"><li class="nav-item d-none d-lg-inline-flex"><a class=nav-link href=/ aria-label><i class="fas fa-" aria-hidden=true></i></a></li><li class=nav-item><a class="nav-link js-search" href=# aria-label=Search><i class="fas fa-search" aria-hidden=true></i></a></li><li class="nav-item dropdown theme-dropdown"><a href=# class=nav-link data-toggle=dropdown aria-haspopup=true aria-label="Display preferences"><i class="fas fa-moon" aria-hidden=true></i></a><div class=dropdown-menu><a href=# class="dropdown-item js-set-theme-light"><span>Light</span></a> 12<a href=# class="dropdown-item js-set-theme-dark"><span>Dark</span></a> 13<a href=# class="dropdown-item js-set-theme-auto"><span>Automatic</span></a></div></li></ul></div></nav></div><div class=page-body><article class="article article-project"><div class="article-container pt-3"><h1>Nashville Autonomous Recording + BirdNET Project</h1><div class=article-metadata><span class=article-date>Last updated on 14Aug 28, 2025</span></div></div><div class="article-header article-container featured-image-wrapper mt-4 mb-4" style=max-width:720px;max-height:541px><div style=position:relative><img src=/project/nash-sm4-project/featured_huaf7a4fae9c69f814c75c8953bc1a42ec_428746_720x0_resize_q75_lanczos.jpg alt class=featured-image></div></div><div class=article-container><div class=article-style><p><strong>(In revision)</strong></p><p><strong>Authors:</strong></p><p>Abigail Searfoss, Emily Hudson, Nyssa Kantorek, Tara Stanley, Nicole Creanza</p><p>This project (in progress) aims to examine the effects of various metrics of urbanization on bird song, broadly, in urban greenspace. Recorders were placed at 21 parks of varying size and proximity to urban environments throughout Nashville. In total, we collected almost 2800 hours of recordings over the course of 155 days.</p><p>Using a map of artificial night sky brightness as a proxy for degree of urbanization, we identified multiple locations to record (Fig. 1), covering the spectrum between rural and urban (Bortle class 4-9). While the primary focus was on Davidson County in the context of Nashvilleâs current population growth, locations of field work extend from Davidson County into surrounding counties (Henderson, Wilson, Dekalb, and Maury) for rural collection sites. Throughout the spring and summer of 2018 (MarchâAugust), two Wildlife Acoustics SM4 recorders were set to passively record at different parks, moving locations approximately every 1â2 weeks.</p><p>The urban variables used were pulled from the Nashville Data Portal: number of Noise Complaints, the number of Building Permits Issued from 2018 to October 2020, and the location of major roads including busy, multiple-lane roads and local highways. Data points in other cities and counties were excluded from this analysis due to GIS data accessibility. We then performed spatial joins in QGIS to record both the number of noise complaints, building permits, major roads, and highways within that buffer region and the distance from the recording locations to each of the nearest urban variables.</p><p>After the recordings were collected, as an initial step, we used <a href=https://birdnet.cornell.edu/>BirdNET API</a> to identify common species. Because of the nature of unsupervised annotation of autonomous recordings, this first pass of song identification gives us a crude approximation of abundance; one individual singing frequently is not distinguished from many individuals singing infrequently. Nonetheless, the amount of bird song heard from each species does give important information about the ecological community in each park.</p><div id=how-do-measures-of-anthropogenic-disturbance-affect-the-species-community-of-bird-song class="section level2"><h2>How do measures of anthropogenic disturbance affect the species community of bird song?</h2><pre><code>## Analysis of Deviance Table 15## 16## Model: Y_mv_binom ~ . 17## 18## Multivariate test: 19## Res.Df Df.diff Dev Pr(>Dev) 20## (Intercept) 21 21## recording_length_h 20 1 74.69 0.047 * 22## world_atlas_2015_bortle_class 19 1 179.56 0.001 *** 23## viirs_2018_radiance_10_9w_cm_2_sr 18 1 79.30 0.057 . 24## average_foreground_d_b 17 1 25.57 0.947 25## average_background_d_b 16 1 75.71 0.129 26## rms_difference 15 1 61.38 0.221 27## nearby_noise_complaints 14 1 76.87 0.023 * 28## nearby_building_permits 13 1 74.54 0.140 29## nearby_major_roads 12 1 90.13 0.041 * 30## area_acres 11 1 74.56 0.099 . 31## --- 32## Signif. codes: 0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1 33## Arguments:
34## Test statistics calculated assuming uncorrelated response (for faster computation) 35## P-value calculated using 999 iterations via PIT-trap resampling.</code></pre><p>Looking at the whole community of species, light pollution levels (<a href=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bortle_scale>Bortle Scale</a>), nearby major roads, and number of nearby noise complaints have the strongest effect on species composition.</p><p><img src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcMErG7WIGiWTG8khjOzeil2X_SZgrtnJb8iWsXYqvesJlnCHupFmwt5O3oGyJeEaP7jx4ZVcCFg1yinkw4lDsgo0WcB1p2YGq6vDa5YyyuOUkJZWW5WhR4kDJXVr18lV3HWxPAW6XMEgEWp-_QyYz4TLax?key=BUy3x7m6sWo9QmXTPlv52w7y"></p><p><strong>Figure 1. Locations and levels of light pollution of recording sites in and around Nashville, TN.</strong> The top image includes locations of all field sites. The inset provides a closer look at the locations around metro Nashville. The maps are adapted from <a href=http://www.lightpollutionmap.info>lightpollutionmap.info</a>. The data displayed is the World Atlas 2015 of artificial night sky brightness</p><p>â</p><p>However, none of the variables have a significant effect on individual species recording abundance when they are each run in a separate univariate test.</p><pre><code>## Loading required package: permute</code></pre><p>We can still look at the directional effects of the the significant predictors on species abundance, even if they arenât significant in univariate tests.</p><p><img src=https://ejhudson.netlify.app/project/nash-sm4-project/index_files/figure-html/unnamed-chunk-5-1.png width=672><img src=https://ejhudson.netlify.app/project/nash-sm4-project/index_files/figure-html/unnamed-chunk-5-2.png width=672><img src=https://ejhudson.netlify.app/project/nash-sm4-project/index_files/figure-html/unnamed-chunk-5-3.png width=672></p><p><strong>Fig 2.</strong> The coefficients from the three significant predictors (road proximity, noise complaints and light pollution) identified by the full generalized linear model. Species-level effects are shown, although none of these effects were identified as significant in post-hoc univariate tests.</p><hr><p>A more sophisticated analysis would involve actually estimating abundance (counting individuals); the <a href=https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/how-ai-is-helping-advance-the-science-of-bioacoustics-to-save-endangered-species/>latest AI models</a> being applied to bioacoustics have this capability. This is a future aim of this project.</p></div></div><div class=article-tags><a class="badge badge-light" href=/tag/r/>R</a> 36<a class="badge badge-light" href=/tag/machine-learning/>machine learning</a> 37<a class="badge badge-light" href=/tag/autonomous-recordings/>autonomous recordings</a></div><div class=share-box aria-hidden=true><ul class=share><li><a href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https://ejhudson.netlify.app/project/nash-sm4-project/&text=Nashville%20Autonomous%20Recording%20+%20BirdNET%20Project" target=_blank rel=noopener class=share-btn-twitter><i class="fab fa-twitter"></i></a></li><li><a href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https://ejhudson.netlify.app/project/nash-sm4-project/&t=Nashville%20Autonomous%20Recording%20+%20BirdNET%20Project" target=_blank rel=noopener class=share-btn-facebook><i class="fab fa-facebook"></i></a></li><li><a href="mailto:?subject=Nashville%20Autonomous%20Recording%20+%20BirdNET%20Project&body=https://ejhudson.netlify.app/project/nash-sm4-project/" target=_blank rel=noopener class=share-btn-email><i class="fas fa-envelope"></i></a></li><li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?url=https://ejhudson.netlify.app/project/nash-sm4-project/&title=Nashville%20Autonomous%20Recording%20+%20BirdNET%20Project" target=_blank rel=noopener class=share-btn-l
37inkedin><i class="fab fa-linkedin-in"></i></a></li><li><a href="whatsapp://send?text=Nashville%20Autonomous%20Recording%20+%20BirdNET%20Project%20https://ejhudson.netlify.app/project/nash-sm4-project/" target=_blank rel=noopener class=share-btn-whatsapp><i class="fab fa-whatsapp"></i></a></li></ul></div><div class="media author-card content-widget-hr"><a href=https://ejhudson.netlify.app><img class="avatar mr-3 avatar-circle" src=/author/emily-j.-hudson/avatar_hubb3e307997cdec075ccc12f9f4c80754_139917_270x270_fill_q75_lanczos_center.jpg alt="Emily J. Hudson"></a><div class=media-body><h5 class=card-title><a href=https://ejhudson.netlify.app>Emily J. Hudson</a></h5><h6 class=card-subtitle>evolutionary biologist and data enthusiast | she/they</h6><ul class=network-icon aria-hidden=true><li><a href=mailto:[email protected]><i class="fas fa-envelope"></i></a></li><li><a href=/><i class="fas fa-"></i></a></li><li><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=aeKQCqoAAAAJ&hl=en" target=_blank rel=noopener><i class="fas fa-graduation-cap"></i></a></li><li><a href=https://github.com/emhudson target=_blank rel=noopener><i class="fab fa-github"></i></a></li><li><a href=https://www.linkedin.com/in/ejhudson1/ target=_blank rel=noopener><i class="fab fa-linkedin"></i></a></li></ul></div></div><div class="article-widget content-widget-hr"><h3>Related</h3><ul><li><a href=/project/mediamix-project/>Media Mix Modeling Demo</a></li><li><a href=/publication/hourihan-2025-junco/>Song distinguishability predicts reproductive isolation between subspecies of the dark-eyed junco (Preprint)</a></li><li><a href=/publication/hudson-2020-role/>The role of nestling acoustic experience in song discrimination in a sparrow</a></li><li><a href=/project/landmap-project/>Endangered species critical habitat for sale</a></li><li><a href=/project/rangemap-project/>Sister species range maps</a></li></ul></div><div class="project-related-pages content-widget-hr"></div></div></article></div><div class=page-footer><div class=container><footer class=site-footer><p class=powered-by></p><p class=powered-by>Published with <a href="https://wowchemy.com/?utm_campaign=poweredby" target=_blank rel=noopener>Wowchemy</a> â the free, <a href=https://github.com/wowchemy/wowchemy-hugo-modules target=_blank rel=noopener>open source</a> website builder that empowers creators.</p></footer></div></div><div id=modal class="modal fade" role=dialog><div class=modal-dialog><div class=modal-content><div class=modal-header><h5 class=modal-title>Cite</h5><button type=button class=close data-dismiss=modal aria-label=Close> 38<span aria-hidden=true>×</span></button></div><div class=modal-body><pre><code class="tex hljs"></code></pre></div><div class=modal-footer><a class="btn btn-outline-primary my-1 js-copy-cite" href=# target=_blank><i class="fas fa-copy"></i>Copy</a> 39<a class="btn btn-outline-primary my-1 js-download-cite" href=# target=_blank><i class="fas fa-download"></i>Download</a><div id=modal-error></div></div></div></div></div>
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