The tutorial data

Before running any analysis, you need to gather the three files that pamflow requires. In this section you will download the tutorial data and get familiar with its structure.

1. Download tutorial data

The audio recordings you’ll need for this tutorial can be found here.

Note

This sample data is provided to show you how to use pamflow, if you plan to use these recordings for other purposes, please get in touch and make sure to give proper attribution.

2. Audio recordings

During The Guaviare Project, 4 recorders were deployed for 5 days, programmed to record 30 seconds every 30 minutes. If everything went as expected, each deployment collected 48 files per day, for a total of 960 one-minute recordings.

Inside the main folder pam_data_guaviare/ you will find one subfolder per deployment, named after its deployment ID and containing all the audio files collected at that location:

/guaviare_project_external_disk/pam_data_guaviare/
├── MC-002/
│   ├── MC-002_20240229_000000.WAV
│   ├── MC-002_20240229_003000.WAV
│   ├── MC-002_20240229_010000.WAV
│   ├── MC-002_20240229_013000.WAV
│   └── MC-002_20240229_020000.WAV
├── MC-007/ 
├── MC-009/  
└── MC-013/  

This main folder is referred to as the audio_root_directory — you will use this name when configuring pamflow in the next step.

Important

Audio file names must follow this format: DEPLOYMENTID_DATE_TIME.WAV pamflow will ignore any files that do not match this structure.

3. Field deployments sheet

Field researchers installed the recorders and noted key information about each deployment: site coordinates, installation date and time, recorder settings, and habitat characteristics.

These notes were handed to you alongside the recordings as the field_deployments_sheet — a .xlsx file with one row per recorder containing the above information.

4. Target species list

Even though the monitoring site hosts many bird species, the community is only interested in a few considered relevant for conservation. Along with the audio_root_directory and the field_deployments_sheet, you were given a list of these species: the target_species file, a .csv with a single column (scientificName) and one row per species.

scientificName
Amazona farinosa
Cyanocorax violaceus
Pitangus sulphuratus
Ramphastos tucanus
Trogon viridis
Ara severus
Nyctidromus albicollis
Lophostrix cristata

Tip

These three files — the audio folder, the field deployments sheet, and the target species list — are all that pamflow needs to run. The target species file is the only optional one; if left empty, detections will not be filtered by species.

Now that you understand the data and its structure, let’s move on to the next step to load it into pamflow.