Spectrograph allowed?

[lappelbaum]

I had been putting off going through all my audio files because I knew I would need to edit most of them. I finally downloaded Audacity and started getting to work so that I can upload the stuff I recorded during the City Nature Challenge. BTW, I read about using low pass and high pass filters, but I found a much easier way to do it is to use the effect on Audacity called Spectral Delete.

Anyways, my question is: If I don’t have a photo of the animal, is it acceptable to upload an image of the spectrograph? If so, would it be okay to use the colored spectrograph that I get with Audacity or should I use another program that will give me one in black and white?

[joedziewa]

No image is necessary and there is some debate about the acceptability of using an image of a spectrogram. I don’t usually personally find the addition useful for my IDs, because if I need to look at one, I can generate it to my preferred specs easily enough.

I also find I usually do better when audio is unmodified. Sometimes a filter can change the way something sounds in unexpected ways.

[jwidness]

staff response:

@kueda

Observation photos are intended and assumed to be photographic evidence for the recent presence of an organism, i.e. they should communicate what you saw in the field. Not spectrograms, not habitat shots, not pictures of the sky to show what the weather was like, not photos of photos, just actual photos that show someone what you saw, and hopefully look like what others might see when seeing similar evidence for the recent presence of the same taxon. We make that assumption when showing observations photos on the taxon page, when training our computer vision system, when sharing data with partners like GBIF, etc., and all those non-organism shots break that assumption and cause us to use and share inaccurate information (we claim something is a photo of an organism when it’s actually a spectrogram). If at some point we support some way to categorize observation photos or support some other form of ancillary photographic material to be attached to an obs, then that stuff would be ok, but at present we don’t. I realize tracks & signs screw that up and I admit my tolerance for them is a lot higher than it is for spectrograms, but I think that’s b/c they at least show something unique about the organism that helps others learn to recognize it in person (“but what about microscopy” etc etc). Spectrograms are great evidence and really interesting (as are habitat shots, microscopy, most of the other kinds of images that people upload as obs photos), but if we’re not going to distinguish them from photos of organisms then I don’t think people should upload them. Maybe post them elsewhere and embed them in the description or a comment or something.

[schoenitz]

I feel it’s necessary to include kueda’s follow-up from that thread to clarify that as of now there is no official policy w/r/t spectrograms:

@kueda

I didn’t say it was an official position. It is my opinion. If we on staff thought this was a serious problem we would build tools to support or suppress these kinds of images, or at least include some kind of statement of policy in the FAQ or the Curator’s Guide. I would personally prefer that people not post these kinds of images as observation photos, but currently we don’t have an official position on them.

So – yes, they’re allowed.

[lappelbaum]

I’m amplifying so you can actually hear it. The low and high pass filters sometimes make it sound weird. I found that the spectral delete doesn’t do that. I usually just use it to remove the background noise (bottom of the spectrogram), but I also just used it to remove a cardinal singing in the distance easily because it was much higher pitched than the frog I was recording. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/116114094

[lappelbaum]

Thanks guys. I’ll stick with using no image.