My Social Action Project
The third aim of my Senior Thesis Project is to explore ways of inspiring community members to appreciate natural sounds to understand the significance of soundscapes and how they change. Using bioacoustics as a way of monitoring biodiversity, community members can contribute and be involved with community/citizen science and the use of an app called CyberTracker.
My workshop with the Landcare team
For my Social Action Project this year, I contacted Neil K., the manager and coordinator of the volunteer Landcare group that maintains and restores the bushland and sand dunes at Norah Head, where I have previously completed 80+ hours of volunteer work as part of my Big Picture Learning Through Internship (LTI). These 80 hours started in 2020, before the pandemic when I frequently involved myself in the restorative work that the volunteer team had been achieving.
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I inquired if it would be possible to run a small workshop with the Landcare team looking at monitoring biodiversity, in particular using the app CyberTracker. CyberTracker is an app used to record sightings of flora and fauna, whether that be by taking a photograph of the animal or plant, making a sound recording of a bird’s call or song or even evidence of its presence such as a burrow, nest, feathers, fur or droppings. The data collected by the app is important in our changing world and climate as it can provide statistics on what our current species diversity and abundance is now compared to what it might be in the future. The data collected through the app is uploaded to the BioNet and can be accessed by researchers worldwide for scientific data and reports. The data could also be used in scientific investigations to compare biodiversity in Norah Head now to a period after increased human activity or a natural disaster such as a fire or flood.
