Acoustic sensors enable efficient and non-invasive monitoring of a wide range of species, including many that are difficult to monitor in other ways. Although they were initially limited in application scope largely due to cost and hardware constraints, the development of low-cost, open-source models like the Audiomoth in recent years has increased access immensely and opened up new avenues of research. For example, some teams are using them to identify illicit human activities through the detection of associated sounds, like gunshots, vehicles, or chainsaws (e.g. OpenEars).
With this relatively novel dimension of wildlife monitoring rapidly advancing in both marine and terrestrial systems, it is crucial that we identify and share information about the utility and constraints of these sensors to inform efforts. A recent study identified advancements in hardware and machine learning applications, as well as early development of acoustic biodiversity indicators, as factors facilitating progress in the field. In terms of limitations, the authors highlight insufficient reference sound libraries, a lack of open-source audio processing tools, and a need for standardization of survey and analysis protocols. They also stress the importance of collaboration in moving forward, which is precisely what this group will aim to facilitate.
If you're new to acoustic monitoring and want to get up to speed on the basics, check out these beginner's resources and conversations from across the WILDLABS platform:
Three Resources for Beginners:
- Listening to Nature: The Emerging Field of Bioacoustics, Adam Welz
- Ecoacoustics and Biodiversity Monitoring, RSEC Journal
- Monitoring Ecosystems through Sound: The Present and Future of Passive Acoustics, Ella Browning and Rory Gibb
Three Forum Threads for Beginners:
- AudioMoth user guide | Tessa Rhinehart
- Audiomoth and Natterjack Monitoring (UK) | Stuart Newson
- Help with analysing bat recordings from Audiomoth | Carlos Abrahams
Three Tutorials for Beginners:
- "How do I perform automated recordings of bird assemblages?" | Carlos Abrahams, Tech Tutors
- "How do I scale up acoustic surveys with Audiomoths and automated processing?" | Tessa Rhinehart, Tech Tutors
- Acoustic Monitoring | David Watson, Ruby Lee, Andy Hill, and Dimitri Ponirakis, Virtual Meetups
Want to know more about acoustic monitoring and learn from experts in the WILDLABS community? Jump into the discussion in our Acoustic Monitoring group!
Header image: Carly Batist
Dzanga-Ndoki national park biodiversity monitoring
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- @HannahJasinski
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Orthoptera conservationist bioacoustics
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- @dombroski.julia
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World Wide Fund for Nature/ World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
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- @tom_august
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Computational ecologist with interests in computer vision, citizen science, open science, drones, acoustics, data viz, software engineering, public engagement
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- @amykukulya
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Amy Kukulya is an ocean tech innovator and conservationist from the US. She has captured thrilling footage of megafauna using novel biologger and oceanrobotCams—SharkCam, TurtleCam featured across the globe on mainstream media outlets.
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- @TheDataEnthusiastic
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Hi, I'm pursuing Master's in Data Science. And I want work help protect nature and wildlife.
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Do you know anyone interested in this position? Let them know by sharing widely.
27 February 2024
The Ecological Acoustics and Behavior Lab at the University of New Hampshire seeks a PhD student to join our lab to investigate how forest habitat affects moose occupancy and soundscape in northern New Hampshire
13 February 2024
The primary focus of the research is to explore how red deer movements, space use, habitat selection and foraging behaviour change during the wolf recolonization process.
10 February 2024
Applications open for a PhD position in plant vibroacoustics at the University of Southampton
8 February 2024
We demonstrate the power of using passive acoustic monitoring & machine learning to survey species, using ruffed lemurs in southeastern Madagascar as an example.
23 January 2024
Come join our team! We're looking for a Program Officer to join the WILDLABS Community, hosted by WCS in Argentina. This role will support our research program, with the chosen candidate leading our horizon scanning...
22 January 2024
Careers
We're hiring ecologists for immediate start / remote working / short contract
19 January 2024
Two years in Cape Town, South Africa. Yearly visits to Rwanda. If you love to code, and all things Python/deep learning/tech stuff/ then you'll have an awesome time!
16 January 2024
This article discussed early work on modeling how acoustic properties of the environment will change with variations in weather.
9 January 2024
Analysing recordings of gunshots could help save endangered species around the world by identifying poacher hotspots.
7 January 2024
Digital monitoring tools are helping rangers protect wildlife in South America's Atlantic Forest. Could sound-based maps pin down the poaching threat?
7 January 2024
The IQOE Task Team on Low-Cost Hydrophones for Research, Education, and Citizen Science is looking for industry partners to develop a low-cost hydrophone.
15 December 2023
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43 Products
Recently updated products
Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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Fantastic!! |
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Acoustics, AI for Conservation, Biologging, Build Your Own Data Logger Community, Community Base, Early Career, Ethics of Conservation Tech, Marine Conservation, Open Source Solutions | 5 seconds ago | |
If you search Digikey for a 'strain relief' you should be able to find a rubber grommet that will hold that mic without any additional machining. A blob of silicone will adhesive... |
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Acoustics | 2 weeks ago | |
Thanks Carly! I had reviewed some of the help files, but clearly not the right ones!My email is [email protected] |
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Acoustics, Software and Mobile Apps | 2 weeks 1 day ago | |
Hi Tabitha, What recording settings were you using when you saw these differences? I've measured the consumption across some different firmware versions and I can't see any... |
+10
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Acoustics | 2 weeks 5 days ago | |
Wow.. Really exciting to see this effort. Congratulations on the award!I have been interested in this subject for a long time, as we have elephant-human conflicts in plenty in... |
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Acoustics | 3 weeks 3 days ago | |
Hello!Long time, no update. @StephODonnell suggested I post here with my thesis and some reflections. ---------------------------------------------------------TL;DR... |
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Acoustics | 1 month ago | |
I think I've landed on the Wildlife Acoustics Song Meter Mini Bat 2 for now, but I'm definitely interested to see how this cheaper tech progresses |
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Acoustics | 1 month ago | |
Hi Jesse,For a material to be acoustically transparent (in air), the speed of sound in the material times its density must match that of air. Realistically, any solid... |
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Acoustics, Biologging | 1 month ago | |
Hi Steph, We appreciate the support! Thanks for the tag and your help managing the community!Patrick |
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Sensors, Acoustics, Conservation Dogs, Emerging Tech, Open Source Solutions | 1 month ago | |
Hi Sol,If the maximum depth is 30m, it would be worth experimenting with HydroMoth in this application especially if the deployment time is short. As Matt says, the air-filed case... |
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Acoustics, AI for Conservation, Data management and processing tools, Emerging Tech, Sustainable Fishing Challenges | 1 month ago | |
Oh wow, thank you so much!!!I will keep that four advices in mind! |
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Acoustics | 1 month ago | |
You won't get any audio if you don't allow enough time for the hydromoth/audiomoth to write. So when you do a continuous recording you need to experiment a little. I'm sure there... |
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Acoustics | 1 month ago |
Conservation Technology Intern (Vietnam)
11 January 2023 5:00pm
Education Paper on Computer Vision for Ecology
9 January 2023 5:30am
Job: Conservation Technology Specialist (PT)
6 January 2023 12:49am
Job: maker / workshop technician
5 January 2023 10:53am
San Diego Zoo needs Summer Undergraduates!!
19 December 2022 1:58pm
Upcoming PAM & R Ocean Science Courses
16 December 2022 3:27pm
PhD - Sensory ecology of vespine wasps
8 December 2022 12:47pm
New paper - First population estimates of two Critically Endangered frogs from an isolated forest plateau in Madagascar
28 November 2022 4:19pm
Acoustic survey data is used to estimate the diversity of critically endangered amphibians in the fragmented forests of Madagascar.
Unifying acoustic metadata
2 November 2022 10:21am
4 November 2022 3:47pm
Hi Jamie, this is super exciting! I had not realized that PAMGuard integration was going to be part of the plan for Tethys - so thrilling!
One quick question - when processing large datasets, often I end up with a series of binary/database files (e.g., separate runs for separate frequency bands). Does Tethys accommodate the multiple file scenario?
Would love to give it a whirl when appropriate.
7 November 2022 12:32pm
Yeah, it's an exciting project. Also will be a great excuse to improve PAMGuard documentation - something sorely needed. Python libraries also on the way as part of this.
As for Tethys, yes it will accommodate the multiple configuration file scenario - ideally the end game will be that any configuration you use in PAMGuard will be directly exportable to a Tethys database. If you use multiple configurations, then each is a separate Tethys database, however, when these are exported they can be amalgamated into one because the Tethys is clever enough to know these are the same data processed in different ways.
"Would love to give it a whirl when appropriate. " - might be a while but noted! :-)
WILDLABS Digest: 4 November 2022
4 November 2022 3:42pm
A new issue of our community digest just went out! Check it out to discover a big platform update, and a summary of all the latest content from across WILDLABS in one easy to scan place!
Data mgmt for Passive Acoustic Monitoring best practices?
14 September 2022 8:35pm
15 September 2022 4:20pm
Hi Alex--
The first thing I'd suggest you think through is how much data you have vs how much data you are currently working on. Because if you have data from previous years that you want to ensure you're storing securely and reliably but don't need immediate access to in order to run analysis on, that opens up some options. You can compress data using lossless algorithms like FLAC, where the compression ratio varies but 50% is a pretty good margin, and then convert back to WAV if necessary for reanalysis. Compressing using MP3, OGG, AIFF, or other compression algorithms is an option that saves even more storage space but you will lose information in ways you wouldn't with FLAC--it depends on your specific needs.
I'd also recommend setting up a RAID array (RAID = "Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks"). This offers some additional security in event of a drive failure. A lot of folks who do video editing, probably the most similar use case to people working with acoustic data who also lack the institutional support of a large company or university IT department use a local NAS enclosure like https://www.qnap.com/en-us/product/ts-433 that are designed for just this purpose. Some higher initial startup costs than just buying individual USB hard drives but that does come with some perks including additional reliability and can be faster to read data depending on the exact drive specs and your local networking setup.
There are also low-cost cloud storage services like Amazon's Glacier. However, getting these set up can be a little bit tricky and they are not particularly responsive (for example, if you upload data to Glacier, it will be very safe, but getting it back if you need to use it again can take a few days depending on the dataset size).
19 September 2022 1:58am
Hello Alex,
My information might not be that helpful to you, still, our organisation have an Enterprise license of AWS cloud and we store all our media files (video, pictures, audio etc.) there. We are also using a media management solution, Piction, thru which we upload the files into the S3 bucket and in the process it also captures the file metadata (some of the metadata values needs to be entered manually). This is useful to search the files if someone wants to view or process the file later. We are soon deciding on the file storage configuration so that old files will move to cheap storage like AWS Glacier, which will take a maximum of a week time to retrieve it.
Jitendra
28 October 2022 4:19pm
Hi Alex,
I'd go much further along the lines that David @dtsavage sets out. Before jumping to implementations, better think through why you want to keep all that data, and for who? From your question, it appears you have at least three purposes:
1- for yourself to do your research
2- for others to re-use.
3- for yourself to have a back-up
For 1) you should do what works best for you.
For 3) use your organization's back-up system or whatever comes close to that
For 2 and 3) As you are indicating yourself : deposit your data at your nation's repository or zenodo.org if your nation doe not have one. It may be some documentation work ( which is what you should do anyways, right? ), but then you can stop worrying about holding on to it. Someone else is doing that for you and they do a much better job - because it is their job. Moreover, you increase the chance that other will actually become aware of all that data that you are sitting on by putting it into a repository. Who is otherwise going to find out and how that you have those disks on your desk? Lastly, depositing your data can also serve as a back-up. If you don't want to share it before you've published about it, there is likely the option of depositing under time-embargo or of depositing while requiring your consent for any re-use.
You ask how many people actually do this? You can find the answers at the repository, but I suggest that what matters most is whether you want to for your own reasons, and whether your funders, or organization's funders require it.
Audiomoth online conference
24 October 2022 4:50pm
New conservation tech articles from Mongabay
20 October 2022 7:45pm
Software to aid acoustic sound files visualization/labelling + Software to syncronize video/acoustic sonograms
23 September 2022 1:01pm
8 October 2022 12:44am
I would also recommend Arbimon. It is well set up to handle Audiomoth recordings. Being cloud based, you will need a good internet connection for sound file upload. I'm just starting to investigate its use for Song Scope recordings. Setting up the call recognisers will be a slow process, but they can be made available to all users once done.
8 October 2022 7:33am
You could try using a video editor like DaVinci for looking at your video and audio together. I don't think DaVinci displays sonograms by default (just waveform) but I think it will open your selected audio in an external editor which would allow you to see the sonograms and make measurements with something like Audacity or Kaleidoscope.
20 October 2022 11:01am
The open-source program Audacity can show the spectrograms and histograms and has quite a lot of other useful features, e.g. playing ultrasound calls slower, so it can be heard by people.
Conservation Technology Intern (Vietnam)
19 October 2022 9:22am
Acoustic Monitoring Biologist (Avian)
19 October 2022 12:11am
New paper: Benthic animal-borne sensors & citizen science combine to validate ocean modelling
10 October 2022 4:15pm
"We develop the use of benthic species as animal oceanographers by combining archival (depth, temperature) data from animal-borne tags, passive acoustic telemetry & citizen-science mark-recapture records for the flapper skate in Scotland."
The Smart Biosphere: How Technology can provide regenerative resources at scale
10 October 2022 12:06pm
Open Position at Cornell - Software/Firmware Developer
6 October 2022 5:10pm
Multi-day workshop: Machine Learning Advances for Marine Acoustics & Imagery Data
4 October 2022 5:20pm
Audio Across Domains Workshop 2022
3 October 2022 7:54pm
3 October 2022 11:40pm
11 October 2022 2:05pm
New paper - Rookognise: Acoustic detection & identification of individual rooks in field recordings using multi-task neural networks
3 October 2022 2:35pm
Authors developed system to acoustically identify individual animals (under varying conditions) using combo of multi-scale information integration, multi-channel audio & multi-task learning. Tested on captive group of rooks.
New paper: Battery-free wireless imaging of underwater environments
29 September 2022 3:22pm
'The low-power camera uses power from harvested acoustic energy and communicates colour images wirelessly via acoustic backscatter.' - https://twitter.com/NaturePortfolio/status/1574863768714100738?s=20&t=d…
New paper: Seasonal swarming behavior of Myotis bats revealed by integrated monitoring, involving passive acoustic monitoring with automated analysis, trapping & video monitoring
27 September 2022 3:22pm
Authors 'examined effectiveness of acoustic monitoring compared to capture-based & video monitoring of seasonal swarming behavior among Myotis bats in UK. The 3 approaches have advantages & disadvantages for different tasks, but can be highly complementary methods.'
Conservation Tech Directory - new update!
29 August 2022 2:38pm
23 September 2022 5:26pm
Congrats on the milestone Carly and Gracie!
26 September 2022 10:07pm
Thanks so much!!
Audio Data Across Domains (AudioXD) Workshop
6 June 2022 3:52pm
1 September 2022 11:46am
Great minds Alice!! I'd actually sent your workshop to justin separately this morning because of the alignment with audioxd.
As for joining things up globally, I think you're right. Looking at all that's happening in the bioacoustics community right now, seeing all these sort of events, what's happening with the bioacoustics stack exchange, and hearing the conversations that are happening - and it feels like such an opportune time to find a way to support all of these efforts link up and join forces. We have some plans on this front that will mean we'll be able to provide coordination support to help, and I'm interested to hear what people think is needed.
Steph
1 September 2022 3:21pm
Thanks Alice, and great to hear from you and Steph about the work that you all are leading. It would be great to follow up on the idea of doing more international collaboration in the ecoacoustics/bioacoustics space. If you're interested, feel free to drop me a line to catch up sometime about ideas.
Also, something of a side note, but we'll also have a Wildlabs blog post up summarizing the AudioXD meeting soon, hopefully.
26 September 2022 9:22pm
I love the idea of increasing international collaboration and inclusion within acoustic monitoring! I think there particularly needs to be more collab'ing between the terrestrial & aquatic/marine acoustic monitoring folks!
It would be great for more virtual/hybrid events to foster such international inclusion, so anything to facilitate that sort of online platform would be awesome!
There is also the new Bioacoustics Stack Exchange for Q&A. And the upcoming IBAC conference in Japan next October (2023).
Ecological Forecasting Initiative's data analysis webinar series
26 September 2022 6:50pm
3 November 2022 12:34pm
Hi Ellie - OK sure thing - I can set up an article too.