Ecological field sound recordings of U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Army Fort Wainwright Training Lands, Alaska

This data publication includes 82,025 sound recordings from automated audio recording units (ARUs) for a study of bioacoustics (species-specific sounds) and ecoacoustics (soundscape conditions). We sampled the ecoacoustics of lacustrine, riverine, lowland, and upland environments on training lands managed by U.S. Army Garrison (USAG) Alaska in the boreal biome of central Alaska during June-August 2019 and April-September 2020. The study area included Tanana Flats and Yukon Training Areas of USAG Alaska, and adjacent locations of Bonanza Creek Experimental Forest and Alaska Peatland Experiment site just north of Tanana Flats Training Area, representing diverse environmental conditions.
To determine presence and phenology of individual wildlife species based on their vocalizations and other sounds, and to explore the dynamics of soundscapes of the region, in part to help establish a baseline from which future sound studies can be conducted to determine changes in species and soundscapes and to help identify portions of the study area most, and least, affected by human-sourced noise. The sound files resulted from a part of a broader study conducted on Fort Wainwright, U.S. Army training lands, during an interagency research project between U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Army and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station under funding from the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP) and overseen by the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL).
For more information about these data and this study, see Douglas et al. (2022). These data were originally published on 05/03/2022. Minor metadata updates made on 05/10/2022. **IMPORTANT NOTE: Only a subset of the WAV files (JULY 1, 2019 files across all 24 ARUs) are available for immediate download. The complete package is 2.8 TB. If interested in the entire package, please contact the Archive Team (https://www.fs.usda.gov/rds/archive/contactus).