McDowell Sonoran Preserve – Environmental Monitoring

The acoustic ecology lab director, Garth Paine has been working with a team of Digital Culture Capstone students to develop a Raspberry Pi based sound recording system to examine the degree to which sound from a road that cuts through the McDowell Sonoran Preserve may influence the movement of Mule Deer in that area. Working with the Director of the McDowell Sonoran Field Institute, Helen Rowe we recently placed six custom built recorders in a logarithmic distance spacing from the road into the park.   The data from this initial study during December 2016 will assist in developing a model of baseline amplitude from the road across the study area, leading to the second phase study where we will be pairing sound and image capture to examine the presence and movement of the Mule Deer through this important land corridor.