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A quarter of a century ago, a small but dedicated group of Melburnians ventured out into their local parklands at night, armed with cassette recorders to capture the distinct croaks, trills and ‘ribbits’ of our local frog populations.
Today, those same recordings have evolved into one of Victoria's most successful citizen science programs, with Frog Census App users set to benefit from a new online frog monitoring planner launched by Melbourne Water.
As Melbourne Water marks 25 years of its Frog Census program, Waterwatch Coordinator Jane Petch reflects on the technological advances that have transformed the program’s popularity and shaped the ways in which we care for our creeks and rivers.
“When we launched the Frog Census in 2001, we relied on a small but dedicated group of volunteers who would record the frog calls on cassette tapes and actually mail them in to Melbourne Water’s headquarters for identification by experts,” she said.
“Now we have thousands of volunteers regularly contributing invaluable data on frog populations across Greater Melbourne and the regions, thanks in large part to the Frog Census App developed by Melbourne Water.”
The introduction of the smartphone app in 2016 transformed the program, Petch said, making it easier than ever for people to get involved.
Within a few years, the number of frog recordings doubled, providing scientists with an ever growing and detailed picture of frog populations across Melbourne's waterways.
This month the Frog Census program will launch a new tool, an online frog monitoring planner and accompanying handbook to help support community-led, long-term frog monitoring.
Designed to aid community groups to develop their own monitoring plan, the online planner will guide volunteers to create their own plan to help yield data that is comparable year-on-year.
“Frogs are a critical indicator of the health of our waterways and wetland ecosystems. You just can’t put a price on the data being collected by citizen scientists, it gives us the clearest picture possible of the health and biodiversity of our catchment ecosystems,” Petch said.
“Alone, we simply couldn't conduct ecological surveys across every waterway and wetland, in every season, at the scale needed to understand how our ecosystems are changing,” she added.
As the program enters its next phase, Melbourne Water is exploring how technologies such as AI could one day be used to help with biodiversity monitoring and processing larger volumes of frog recordings more efficiently.
“Think of it working a bit like an AI app which can identify a song in seconds, similarly AI-assisted identification of frog calls could provide instant feedback to the app’s users, enhancing the frogging experience,” Petch said.
Any future integration of AI technology of this nature would be to complement rather than replace citizen scientists, she added. It would also allow our experts to focus on verifying more complex recordings.
"The future of biodiversity monitoring is people, technology and ecological expertise working together."
For more information and how to get involved, visit Frog Census online.
