Our PhD students Vijay Ramesh, Pooja Choksi, and Sarika Khanwilkar have received a grant from Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict, and Complexity (AC4) for Project Dhvani! 

The emerging technology of acoustics is opening a new window into capturing the diversity of sounds from insects, amphibians, birds, and mammals. Low-cost and time-efficient acoustic technology offers novel possibilities for a wide audience to appreciate biodiversity and for local resource managers to identify where and when diversity is under threat across areas of human-wildlife conflict. ‘Project Dhvani’ will use non-invasive audio recorders across a landscape of remarkable stronghold of biodiversity in India: the dry tropical forests of central India. This project will aim to understand how biodiversity varies across human-dominated land cover types in central India using sounds.

Project Dhvani is a collaborative undertaking of three young scientists, local non-governmental and academic institutions and the state Forest Departments in India. This team consists of Vijay Ramesh, who examines the effects of land-use and climate change on biodiversity; Pooja Choksi, who studies patterns of forest degradation and co-existence and Sarika Khanwilkar, who quantifies the relationships and feedback between people and the environment. You can learn more about the project at www.projectdhvani.org