1. Real-time bioacoustics monitoring and automated species identification
- Author
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Rafael Alvarez, Giovany Vega, T. Mitchell Aide, Carlos Milan, Marconi Campos-Cerqueira, and Carlos J. Corrada-Bravo
- Subjects
0106 biological sciences ,Conservation Biology ,Long-term monitoring ,Computer science ,Data management ,Interface (computing) ,Species-specific algorithms ,lcsh:Medicine ,010603 evolutionary biology ,01 natural sciences ,General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology ,Upload ,Cyberinfrastructure ,Data acquisition ,Software ,Animal vocalization ,Machine learning ,Animal Behavior ,business.industry ,010604 marine biology & hydrobiology ,General Neuroscience ,Acoustic monitoring ,lcsh:R ,Automated species identification ,Biodiversity ,General Medicine ,15. Life on land ,Data science ,Human-Computer Interaction ,13. Climate action ,General Agricultural and Biological Sciences ,business ,Global biodiversity - Abstract
Traditionally, animal species diversity and abundance is assessed using a variety of methods that are generally costly, limited in space and time, and most importantly, they rarely include a permanent record. Given the urgency of climate change and the loss of habitat, it is vital that we use new technologies to improve and expand global biodiversity monitoring to thousands of sites around the world. In this article, we describe the acoustical component of the Automated Remote Biodiversity Monitoring Network (ARBIMON), a novel combination of hardware and software for automating data acquisition, data management, and species identification based on audio recordings. The major components of the cyberinfrastructure include: a solar powered remote monitoring station that sends 1-min recordings every 10 min to a base station, which relays the recordings in real-time to the project server, where the recordings are processed and uploaded to the project website (arbimon.net). Along with a module for viewing, listening, and annotating recordings, the website includes a species identification interface to help users create machine learning algorithms to automate species identification. To demonstrate the system we present data on the vocal activity patterns of birds, frogs, insects, and mammals from Puerto Rico and Costa Rica.
- Published
- 2013