Wild Echoes: Eco-Acoustic Monitoring and Ecological Mapping | Sarab Sethi

Anthropogenic pressures are causing ecosystems around the world to change at an increasing rate. Accurate and high-level monitoring of these changes is necessary, yet traditional survey techniques are often taxonomically focussed, laborious, or scale poorly. In this talk we will explore how fully automated eco-acoustic monitoring can address the challenge of accurately mapping large scale ecological changes over long time periods. We will cover rugged recording devices which upload audio in real-time directly from the field (www.bugg.xyz), as well as the state-of-the-art machine learning analyses being developed to make sense of the incoming data. In addition to covering the technology, we will discuss how eco-acoustic monitoring is being used to solve real ecological challenges; from a tropical forest fragmentation experiment in Malaysian Borneo (SAFE Acoustics acoustics.safep...), to a study investigating the composition and dynamics of avian communities in Norway (Sound of Norway thesoundofnorw.... As eco-acoustic monitoring continues to mature, there will be countless more opportunities for it to contribute to fundamental scientific discovery, evidence-based nature management, and sustainable policy development.
Dr Sarab Sethi leads the Ecosystem Sensing Group at Imperial College London, exploring topics spanning applied maths, engineering, and ecology. The group develops novel sensors, systems, and AI to deliver next generation environmental and biodiversity monitoring. Applications of the group's work include conservation, agricultural pest control, supply chain transparency, scientific enquiry, and more.
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