Data from: Tropical forest soundscapes as testimonies of past land use

Habitat loss is considered one of the factors that causes a decrease in biodiversity in the tropics. Many efforts have been made to protect and restore tropical forests, but it is difficult to quantify biodiversity and assess restoration areas. Studies have used soundscape analyses to gain information about the landscape, using acoustic indices as indicators of the health of faunal communities. We aimed to assess the changes in acoustic indices in habitats with different types of human exploitation and to evaluate the variation in acoustic indices during the hours of the day among these different habitats. The recordings were performed using passive acoustic monitoring (PAM), deriving 15 acoustic indices to assess the characteristics of each environment. The results suggest that in rubber plantations (RP) there was less acoustic activity, followed by rubber-forest plantations (RFP) and light selectively logged areas (LSL), while in habitats of young secondary forests (YSF), mature secondary forests (MSF) and intensive selectively logged forests (ISL) there was more acoustic activity, which indicates greater faunal activity.  This study demonstrates that across the various indices tested, the plantation areas (RP and RFP) presented lower values, which indicate reduced acoustic activity compared to forested areas, with the exception of the area lightly selective logged (LSL) which showed lower values of the indices that measure the activity of sonoriferous specie. Therefore, assessing landscape use by monitoring the soundscape can be useful to timely evaluate the ecological dynamics of areas with high species richness, such as the Atlantic Forest.