Publication Date:
2022-02-18
Description:
Aquatic environments encompass the world’s most extensive habitats, rich with sounds
produced by a diversity of animals. Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) is an increasingly
accessible remote sensing technology that uses hydrophones to listen to the underwater
world and represents an unprecedented, non-invasive method to monitor underwater
environments. This information can assist in the delineation of biologically important
areas via detection of sound-producing species or characterization of ecosystem type
and condition, inferred from the acoustic properties of the local soundscape. At a
time when worldwide biodiversity is in significant decline and underwater soundscapes
are being altered as a result of anthropogenic impacts, there is a need to document,
quantify, and understand biotic sound sources–potentially before they disappear.
A significant step toward these goals is the development of a web-based, open-access
platform that provides: (1) a reference library of known and unknown biological sound
sources (by integrating and expanding existing libraries around the world); (2) a data
repository portal for annotated and unannotated audio recordings of single sources
and of soundscapes; (3) a training platform for artificial intelligence algorithms for signal
detection and classification; and (4) a citizen science-based application for public users.
Although individually, these resources are often met on regional and taxa-specific scales,
many are not sustained and, collectively, an enduring global database with an integrated
platform has not been realized. We discuss the benefits such a program can provide,
previous calls for global data-sharing and reference libraries, and the challenges that
need to be overcome to bring together bio- and ecoacousticians, bioinformaticians,
propagation experts, web engineers, and signal processing specialists (e.g., artificial
intelligence) with the necessary support and funding to build a sustainable and scalable
platform that could address the needs of all contributors and stakeholders into
the future.
Repository Name:
EPIC Alfred Wegener Institut
Type:
Article
,
isiRev
Format:
application/pdf
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