Ecosound-explorer: a method for large scale interactive visual navigation of environmental acoustic data

Abstract

Audio recordings are playing an ever more important role in environmental conservation, however as many of these recordings can be thousands of hours long it becomes impossible for a human to listen to them. There already exist several methods of visualising this long-duration data, and each of these methods has advantages and disadvantages that makes it useful for its own niche. There are currently no methods that allow for interactive navigation of an entire year of big environmental audio data on a single screen. This paper proposes a new method that will allow for those involved in species conservation to more easily view and interact with large scale eco-acoustic recordings and quickly interact to support the decision-making process.