The NASA-supported Biodiversity Survey of the Cape project, or BioSCape, recently published a novel acoustic dataset on NASA’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory Distributed Active Archive Center (ORNL DAAC) that paves the way for improved remote monitoring of global biodiversity. By combining ground-level soundscapes with advanced airborne datasets, this release provides scientists with a powerful new tool to track ecosystem health.

BioSCape: Monitoring a Global Biodiversity Hotspot 

The BioSCape research project couples field data with remote sensing data from NASA airborne campaigns to study the Greater Cape Floristic Region (GCFR) in South Africa, one of the world’s 36 biodiversity hotspots. 

Covering just 2.5% of Earth's land surface, biodiversity hotspots house exceptionally high concentrations of plants and animals. The Greater Cape Floristic Region, for example, is home to over 9,000 species of plants, as well as many species of birds and amphibians that are endemic to the region, meaning that they can be found nowhere else on Earth. 

Because threats to biodiversity — such as wildfires, human development, and plant pathogens — often span entire regions, research efforts must capture these broad-scale changes. However, most current biodiversity datasets rely on fine-scale, local field collection. While highly accurate, these localized studies are inherently costly and constrained in both spatial and temporal scope. Although airborne and spaceborne remote sensing platforms offer a promising solution for large-scale monitoring, they lack the resolution to reliably detect elusive or minute species. The solution lies in both approaches: by combining local measurements with remote sensing data, researchers can generate high-resolution inferences about biodiversity across significantly larger regions and extended timeframes.

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Deploying Acoustic Sensors in the Fynbos Biome 

BioSCape recently set out to do just that: an international research team led by Drew A. Turner of CapeNature and the University of the Western Cape deployed autonomous recording units (ARUs) at 521 sites in South Africa’s Greater Cape Floristic Region’s Fynbos Biome to capture local data that could be used in tandem with NASA’s airborne data to gain a deeper understanding of this critical biodiversity. 

To balance continuous data collection with battery life and memory constraints, the devices recorded audio for one minute every 10 minutes over a span of 10 days. This process was repeated during both the rainy and dry seasons to capture the environment over a wider range of time, ultimately producing over 800,000 minutes of recordings in total.

The ARUs are an innovative way to conduct non-invasive surveys: they enable researchers to monitor the entire soundscape ecology in a given area, breaking it down into pieces comprising animal-produced sounds (biophony), noises from the landscape such as wind or thunder (geophony), and sounds from human development (anthrophony).

Ground-Truthing Airborne Datasets Using In Situ Acoustics

These acoustic soundscapes are a critical component of a much larger initiative. The BioSoundSCape dataset is designed to be paired with broader remote sensing efforts, including BioSCape’s 2023 airborne campaign, which sought to capture the structure, function, and composition of the region’s ecosystems. NASA’s 2023 airborne campaign used four highly advanced instruments — AVIRIS-NG (Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer, Next Generation), PRISM (Portable Remote Imaging Spectrometer), LVIS (Land, Vegetation, and Ice Sensor), and HyTES (Hyperspectral Thermal Emission Spectrometer) — to collect UV/visible to short wavelength infrared (UVSWIR) and thermal imaging spectroscopy, alongside laser altimetry LiDAR data, over both terrestrial and aquatic targets.

To ground-truth and enhance the broad-scale data collected by the airborne campaign, researchers can use the local acoustic data to fill in the biological blind spots. Scientists can correlate specific habitat architecture with the animal-produced sounds heard beneath the canopy, effectively bridging the gap between aerial habitat mapping and on-the-ground biodiversity.

Global Collaboration Powered by the Science Cloud 

The sheer volume of data generated from the BioSCape project creates significant logistical challenges. For a graduate student at the University of Cape Town trying to analyze massive BioSCape datasets, a major hurdle isn't just the science — it's the internet connection. Downloading terabytes of high-resolution data across undersea cables from the U.S. is impractically slow.

To meet these challenges, the broader project leverages NASA’s Science Cloud as a collaborative computing space, connecting BioSCape’s 150 scientists from more than 40 institutions, which include NASA centers (Ames Research Center, Goddard Space Flight Center, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Johnson Space Center, and Langley Research Center) and South African agencies (CapeNature, South African National Parks, South African National Biodiversity Institute, and South African Environmental Observation Network).

With the Science Cloud, a student at the University of Cape Town can simply log into a virtual workspace where the data and computing power already reside. This eliminates the need for impossible downloads, instantly unlocking the computing power needed to analyze both BioSCape imagery and the full breadth of NASA’s archives.

The Science Cloud’s right-sized security model is perfectly tailored for international collaborations like BioSCape. Offering a lower-barrier security environment specifically designed to host unclassified, public-facing data (FISMA-low), the Science Cloud creates a highly streamlined onboarding experience that cuts through traditional administrative delays to grant international researchers, students, and citizens rapid access to the compute resources they need. Ultimately, this frictionless approach drastically expands the reach and impact of NASA’s open science initiatives.

Conclusion: A Model for Future Missions 

The BioSCape project offers benefits for both the GCFR and NASA: while advancing scientific discovery and informing biodiversity management, the BioSCape project also provides NASA with an invaluable natural laboratory to test and refine instrumentation and analytical methods. The Cape’s extraordinary spatial diversity — where dozens of plant species can live within a single square meter — presents unique challenges that push NASA instruments to their absolute limits. The Greater Cape Floristic Region demands high resolution and sensitivity from remote sensing instrumentation, driving continuous innovation in NASA capabilities and technology. 

With unprecedented detail and scope, the BioSCape project serves as a powerful blueprint for how researchers interpret air- and space-based biodiversity data for ongoing and future NASA missions, including SBG (Surface Biology and Geology), EMIT (Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation), PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem), ECOSTRESS (Ecosystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station), and GEDI (Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation). By mastering these techniques in one of Earth’s most complex environments, NASA’s researchers are building the vital toolkit needed to safeguard our natural world.

To learn more, visit: https://www.bioscape.io.