Acoustic Monitoring: Automated Identification
Assessing restoration impacts on biodiversity through sound.
Understanding how biodiversity responds to restoration is vital, yet monitoring changes across large areas and long timescales can be difficult. Acoustic monitoring offers a scalable and low-cost solution. By recording soundscapes over time, restoration teams can track wildlife recovery, including species that are hard to observe directly.
This project, led by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) and partners, developed automated tools to make acoustic monitoring simpler, faster and more accessible for restoration projects. It built on existing technology to expand the range of species that can be detected and identified from recordings across Europe.
What the project did
Over 500,000 recordings were processed, revealing biodiversity changes – especially among nocturnal and elusive species.
Between 2021 and 2023, the project created new acoustic classifiers that automatically identify bats, owls, curlew, bush-crickets and small mammals from recorded audio. These were integrated into the BTO’s cloud-based Acoustic Pipeline, allowing researchers and citizen scientists to upload recordings and receive standardised species identifications.
Five Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme projects tested the system in their own landscapes, including Cairngorms Connect, Greater Côa Valley and the Carpathian Mountains. Over half a million recordings were processed, showing how acoustic monitoring can reveal patterns of biodiversity change, especially for nocturnal and elusive species.
Supporting documentation and guidance were also produced, helping restoration teams plan surveys, manage data and validate results.
From 2024 to 2026, the project is expanding its work to refine survey design, analysis methods and data integration. It will provide new tools and recommendations to help restoration projects use acoustic monitoring as a standard method for tracking biodiversity recovery.
Outputs
BTO Acoustic Pipeline
Cloud-based platform for uploading, processing and identifying wildlife sounds from restoration landscapes.
Acoustic pipeline
Acoustic Pipeline Tools and Apps
Applications supporting data management and verification, including the Shiny Tools App for workflow management and the Clip Verification App for manual review of processed audio clips.
Acoustic pipeline tools Shiny app
Acoustic pipeline clip verification app
BTO Ultrasonic Classifiers
Specialised classifiers for detecting bats and other high-frequency species across Europe.
Ultrasonic classifiers
Acoustic Pipeline Guide and Support Hub
Guidance and resources to help users optimise survey design, equipment setup and analysis, and get the best results from the BTO Acoustic Pipeline.
Acoustic pipeline guide
Acoustic pipeline support hub
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