BioSCape Acoustic Recordings from South African Fynbos Ecosystems

Greater Cape Floristic Region in South Africa is the focus of this collection of environmental sound recordings from June to December 2023. The dataset contains recordings from 505 wet season and 489 dry season sites, collected using AudioMoth recorders as part of NASA's BioSCape project. It includes site tabular data and photographs, designed to link ground-based bioacoustic diversity with airborne hyperspectral and lidar imagery.

Use Cases

• Analyzing diurnal and nocturnal patterns of biophony (bird, frog, insect calls) using the 1-minute-per-10-minute sampling schedule.
• Correlating acoustic diversity metrics with land use/land cover types and time since wildfire disturbance from site stratification data.
• Fusing audio data with co-located AVIRIS-NG hyperspectral and LVIS lidar acquisitions for multi-modal ecosystem assessment.
• Studying the composition of anthropophony (vehicle, airplane sounds) and geophony (wind, rain) within protected fynbos and Afromontane forests.
• Using site photographs and tabular information to contextualize acoustic recordings with field conditions.

Strengths

• Stratified sampling across elevation, land cover, and fire history provides structured ecological representation.
• Temporal coverage across day and night from a median 7-day deployment at each site offers soundscape dynamics.
• High technical recording quality with 48 kHz sampling rate and 16-bit depth ensures detailed audio analysis.
• Direct co-location with AVIRIS-NG hyperspectral data for all sites and LVIS lidar for 61% of sites enables robust remote sensing fusion.

Limitations

• Conflicting metadata: last update date is reported as 2026-03 13 on Data.gov but 2023-12-16 on NASA EarthData.
• Exact row count for tabular site data and total number of audio files are not specified in the provided descriptions.
• License is ambiguously listed as 'other-license-specified' on Data.gov but 'None' on NASA EarthData, requiring further verification.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), BioSCape project.

Collection Method

AudioMoth recorders deployed for 4-10 days per site, programmed to record 1 minute every 10 minutes.

Time Range

June to December 2023

Freshness

2026-03-13 07:49:19.070742

Geography

Greater Cape Floristic Region (GCFR), South Africa