ecoSound-web: an open-source, online platform for ecoacoustics [version 3; peer review: 3 approved]

Abstract

Passive acoustic monitoring of soundscapes and biodiversity produces vast amounts of audio recordings, but the management and analyses of these raw data present technical challenges. A multitude of software solutions exist, but none can fulfil all purposes required for the management, processing, navigation, and analysis of acoustic data. The field of ecoacoustics needs a software tool that is free, evolving, and accessible. We take a step in that direction and present ecoSound-web: an open-source, online platform for ecoacoustics designed and built by ecologists and software engineers. ecoSound-web can be used for storing, re-sampling, organising, analysing, and sharing soundscape recording or metadata projects. Specifically, it allows manual annotation of soniferous animals and soundscape components, automatic annotation with deep-learning models for all birds and for UK bat species, peer-reviewing annotations, analysing audio in time and frequency dimensions, computing alpha acoustic indices, and providing reference sound libraries for different taxa. We present ecoSound-web’s structure and features, and describe its operation for typical use cases such as sampling bird and bat communities, using a primate call library, and the analysis of soundscape components and acoustic indices. ecoSound-web is available from: https://github.com/ecomontec/ecoSound-web

Keywords

• Soundscape
• sound analysis
• ecoacoustics
• passive acoustic monitoring
• automated sound recording
• autonomous recording units
• eng