EcoSense Wildlife Intelligence Framework for Biodiversity Monitoring Using Multi-Species Acoustic and Environmental Signal Analysis

Abstract

Passive acoustic techniques are becoming more widely used in biodiversity monitoring for their ability to circumvent some of the time- and space-bound limitations of conventional field survey approaches. In this paper, propose the EcoSense Wildlife Intelligence Framework. This notional framework extends passive acoustic monitoring to provide data on multiple species, coupled with environmental signals to enable ecological interpretation far beyond species presence-absence identification alone. The EcoSense framework conceptualized herein is structured in three layers – acoustic detection, species identification and ecological integration; the third layer utilizes identification of vocalizations to process acoustic and associated environmental metadata, allowing for the derivation of ecologically meaningful community-based metrics of diversity, such as richness and habitat-specific acoustic diversity indices. Based on recent bioacoustic classification and environmental contextualization techniques EcoSense provides a non-invasive monitoring solution likely to supplement conventional survey techniques by continuously recording activity patterns; such as nocturnity and dawn chorus behavior which can be otherwise difficult to directly record. Though the EcoSense framework is as yet awaiting formal field testing, it demonstrates a coherent direction for improvement in the use of acoustic devices for the monitoring of biodiversity over a range of habitats and taxon.