Towards a Transnational Acoustic Biodiversity MOnitoring Network – TABMON

TABMON will apply autonomous acoustic sensing to transnational biodiversity monitoring across a large latitudinal range in Europe. Better integrating essential biodiversity variables (EBVs) into biodiversity policy and management requires operational workflows for integrating heterogeneous data into harmonised EBV data products. Information gathered by acoustic sensing can provide new data to the framework of the EBVs. Scaling this up to inform at a transnational level by harmonizing data collection, analysis, integration with existing data types and integration of information into EBVs will improve operational monitoring for EU reporting, e.g., for the Bird and Habitat Directives or the EU Biodiversity Strategy. TABMON therefore seeks to scale-up acoustic sensing to a harmonised transnational network and improve bioacoustics AI models, to enable implementation of operational large-scale acoustic monitoring as part of a comprehensive European Biodiversity Observation Network. To achieve this goal, TABMON will use a cutting-edge fully autonomous acoustic monitoring system, enabling deployment of a network with previously unfeasible scale, and ground-breaking acoustic analysis to directly infer EBV measurements such as relative abundances, call types, and other behavioural phenology to fill gaps in existing coverage. Further, TABMON will develop standards, protocols and EBV showcases to demonstrate how acoustic observations can be integrated with traditional monitoring programs and existing EU-wide online portals. This will provide the basis for harmonized and standardized EBV data products that can feed into FAIR and SMART indicators at the EU level. In summary, TABMON will provide an end-to-end demonstration of acoustic observation collection, analysis, and integration, building upon transdisciplinary and transnational academic excellence and stakeholder expertise in critical areas such as species and habitat monitoring, conservation, European and national research infrastructures and EU biodiversity policy.