Monitoring avian diversity with bioacoustics analysis, remote sensing and species distribution modeling

Soundscapes to Landscapes (S2L) is a science-based project that seeks to advance animal diversity monitoring from the next generation of Earth-observing satellites. Driven by citizen scientists (CS), the project uses sounds from low-cost recorders (AudioMoths) and bioacoustics analysis to identify bird species by their calls and measure overall diversity. We use bioacoustics-based bird diversity data to explore the benefits and trade-offs in remote sensors, such as space-based lidar (GEDI) relative to existing sensors and abiotic data for spatial modeling of bird diversity and conservation planning. The methodological process of working with CS and bioacoustics will be discussed. To date, a total of 91 CS have volunteered 1,835 hours in field campaigns and 1,391 hours in bioacoustics analysis. To demonstrate our species distribution modeling (SDM) approach, we used existing bird diversity data for Sonoma County, California with vegetation structure (GEDI), climate, phenology, and distance-based predictors to estimate probability of occupancy for 25 common bird species.