The Potential Role of Ecoacoustics in the Study of the Coffee Natural Landscape of Colombia

In 2011, the Coffee Cultural Landscape of Colombia (CCLC) was inscribed in the UNESCO World Heritage List. Several studies have been undertaken to increase its knowledge and promote its conservation and sustainable development; however, there still exists a gap between the knowledge of the visible features of this landscape and the audible ones, which are associated to anthropophonic, geophonic, and, mainly, to biophonic sound-emitting sources. The perception or recording of the audible features in a place has been recently termed as soundscape and is studied by a relatively novel discipline known as ecoacoustics. This chapter is, therefore, aimed to discuss the potential opportunities and challenges of applying ecoacoustic methods—particularly non-negative matrix factorization and acoustic indices—to enrich the study of the CCLC. Essential concepts for both the CCLC and ecoacoustics are also briefly explained, along with an outline of future work directions in short- and long-term perspectives.