Biodiv Sci ›› 2024, Vol. 32 ›› Issue (8): 24188.  DOI: 10.17520/biods.2024188  cstr: 32101.14.biods.2024188

• Original Papers • Previous Articles     Next Articles

AI-assisted recognition for passive acoustic monitoring of birds in urban wetland parks

Haotian Bai1,2, Shang Yu2,3, Xinyuan Pan4, Jiale Ling2,3, Juan Wu5, Kaiqi Xie6, Yang Liu7, Xueye Chen1,8,*()   

  1. 1 Key Laboratory of Urban Land Resources Monitoring and Simulation, Ministry of Natural Resources, Shenzhen, Guangdong 518040, China
    2 South China Institute of Nature Conservation and Ecological Restoration, Guangzhou 510520, China
    3 Guangzhou Linggan Ecological Technology Ltd Co., Guangzhou 510555, China
    4 College of Forestry and Landscape Architecture, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou 510642, China
    5 The Conservation and Management Office of Fauna and Flora of Guangzhou, Guangzhou 510260, China
    6 Shenzhen Mangrove Wetlands Conservation Foundation, Shenzhen, Guangdong 518000, China
    7 School of Ecology, Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen, Guangdong 518107, China
    8 Shenzhen Planning and Natural Resource Data Management Center, Shenzhen, Guangdong 518040, China
  • Received:2024-05-16 Accepted:2024-08-09 Online:2024-08-20 Published:2024-08-28
  • Contact: *E-mail: xueye31@163.com
  • Supported by:
    Open Fund of Key Laboratory of Urban Land Resources Monitoring and Simulation, Ministry of Natural Resources(KF-2022-07-004);Special Funds for Ecological Forestry Construction of Guangdong Forestry Bureau;Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, Sun Yat-sen University(09020-31670001)

Abstract:

Aims: This study aims to explore the effectiveness of AI recognition-based passive acoustic monitoring of bird species in urban wetland parks, as well as to compare its results with traditional transect survey.

Methods: A three-month concurrent monitoring has been carried out from March to May in 2023 at Wanzuitou Wetland Park in Guangzhou City, China. The transect method involved a twice-monthly survey, while acoustic monitoring method utilized two acoustic monitoring devices operating in triggered recording mode throughout the day. Audio files were transmitted via a 4G mobile network to a server, and bird species were identified using an AI model based on the Pearl River Delta bird list, filtered by confidence scores and manually reviewed.

Results: The transect method recorded 2,200 individuals, whereas the acoustic monitoring collected 96,848 audio files, and obtained 34,117 valid records after screening and validation. Two methods identified a total of 70 bird species: 48 species by the transect survey and 49 species by the acoustic monitoring, with 27 species common to both survey methods.

Conclusions: The proportion of species overlapping between the two survey methods was less than half of the total species, suggesting that neither method can fully replace the other in this type of wetland park habitat. Transect survey is more accurate and makes it easier to estimate the population density, but it requires a higher level of bird species identification skills and involve more workloads. The acoustic monitoring can be automated and unmanned, making it easy to expand the scale of monitoring. However, processing the data from audio files is more challenging, and AI species identification results still need manual correction. The combination of traditional transect survey methods and AI recognition-based passive acoustic monitoring will provide higher accuracy and broader application prospects in the future.

Key words: bird diversity, transect survey method, passive acoustic monitoring, AI recognition model