Listening to ecosystems as complex adaptive systems: toward acoustic early warning signals

The value of integrating concepts and methods from Complex Adaptive Systems and the interdisciplinary study of soundscape for better understanding, monitoring and managing human-environment interactions is proposed. Through four examples of our recent research the value of soundscape and its interdisciplinary study, the relevance of ecoacoustics to a socially-concerned Alife is illustrated. From this position, the failure of current computational ecoacoustic methods to capture the fundamentally complex, adaptive and dynamic nature of ecosystems is noted and the potential for Acoustic Early Warning Signals is outlined. Development of an acoustic dimension to the study of complex adaptive systems promises to spawn valuable conceptual frameworks and cost-effective methods for investigating, understanding, predicting, managing and living in future techno-eco-systems, and better tuning the anthroposphere, technosphere and biosphere such that people and the planet can thrive.