General
We offer a range of services with varying prices. A description of what we offer and approximate costs are under Services. You can use the Get an Estimate button to gather information for your specific project and be connected with a member of our team for more details.
See our Services section for how you can customize your project to fit your needs. We can help with portions of your project to get it off the ground and running, or help you fill prohibitive gaps. For instance, we offer some equipment rentals so you don’t have to purchase units outright.
SENSR is a non-profit organization. Our revenue directly covers our costs (e.g., wages and the costs associated with each service) and ensures our continued operation. A small portion of the fees goes towards the continued development of WildTrax.
We are! Our expertise lies in pushing the boundaries of environmental sensor technology to unlock new insights while maintaining data integrity and compatibility.
Data/Privacy
Once all data processing for a project is complete, you can change the project’s status on WildTrax to one of the published project statuses. The project status options will control the visibility of data across the system and the extent to which the data is open for other users to download.
SENSR places a strong emphasis on organizations’ needs and data privacy. While we highly recommend publishing projects with less restrictive statuses to promote collaboration and innovation, each organization will ultimately select a level of openness that suits the requirements of a specific location, project, or organization. For additional information, please consult the sections on Publishing Projects and Data Policies in WildTrax.
Acoustics
An autonomous recording unit or ARU is a specialized device designed to autonomously capture environmental sounds. Simply put, it is a rugged box with microphones that is programmed to record the environment around it over long periods of time.
ARUs have the capacity to capture sound-producing species across environments. Whether it involves the harmonious melodies of the American Robin, the vernal calls of a toad, or the echolocation signals of a bat, there are makes and models of ARUs equipped to document different groups of species.
Species such as birds, amphibians and bats can all be reliably tracked with sound technology. Understanding species populations, movements, or associated changes to the soundscape are pivotal to the greater understanding of the environment.
Comparing the efficacy of ARUs to point counts requires a nuanced evaluation of research objectives and environmental contexts. While ARUs offer continuous and automated sound recording, point counts introduce confirmation with visual and behavioural observations. The choice depends on the specific research goals and the comprehensiveness of data desired. ARUs offer the ability to easily conduct repeat temporal sampling in a specific location whereas a human observer can visit more places, but potentially only once.
The optimal deployment duration, recording schedules, and placement strategies of ARUs depend on the species under investigation and the research questions at hand. For instance, conducting in-depth analyses of long-term soundscapes needs precise recording schedules for extended periods of time. Conversely, longer consecutive recording sessions or more frequent extended recordings might be essential for tracking individual movements or space use.
Sonic ARUs are designed to capture sound within the audible range of human hearing. They are most commonly used to record birds and other environmental sounds. Ultrasonic ARUs are specialized devices to capture sounds in the ultrasonic frequency range, that is, beyond the range of human hearing. Ultrasonic recorders can help study more cryptic species like bats and rodents.
Humans cannot directly hear ultrasonic sounds. However, ultrasonic sounds can be effectively shifted into audible frequencies by slowing down the playback speed. Scientists usually do not rely on the converted audio to identify species, but instead rely on spectrograms, which are visual representations of the sound.
Cameras
Remote cameras (also known as “wildlife cameras” or “camera traps”) each consist of a digital camera with an external flash and/or passive infrared (PIR) sensor that is triggered to capture images or video through different means (e.g., mechanical triggers, active infrared sensors, pre-programmed settings) (Wearn & Glover-Kapfer, 2017).
Remote cameras are an increasingly common tool used to measure a variety of wildlife attributes. For instance, remote cameras can help measure presence (Kucera & Barrett 2011), abundance (Carbone et al. 2001), density, population composition, species richness and diversity (Ahumada et al. 2011), habitat use and distribution (Whittington et al. 2019), activity patterns (Frey et al. 2017), and behaviour (Murray et al. 2016).
While remote cameras are most commonly used to monitor medium to large-sized mammals, they have also been used to detect small mammals (e.g., Mills et al. 2016; Tschumi et al. 2018) and birds (e.g., Kruger et al. 2018; Randler & Kalb 2018).
Remote cameras offer high accuracy rates with less cost and invasiveness than other forms of census (Burton et al. 2015; Kucera & Barrett 2011; Steenweg et al. 2017); are able to continuously collect data (images or video) for multiple species simultaneously; and they may help engage citizens in wildlife monitoring and management (Wearn & Glover-Kapfer 2017).