TABMON – real-time acoustic biodiversity monitoring across Europe

Benjamin Cretois, Carolyn Rosten, Julia Wiel, Cynthia Barile, Ben McEwen, Corentin Bernard, Michiel P Boom, Gerard Bota, Lluís Brotons, Eva Serrano Davies, Hervé Glotin, W. Daniel Kissling, Ricard Marxer, Cristian Pérez-Granados, Dan Stowell, Dani Villero, Jelle S van Zweden, Sarab Sethi

1. Ecological surveys are often fragmented, costly, and limited in scale, leading to large and long-standing knowledge gaps which threaten our ability to properly safeguard biodiversity.

2. Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM) has promised to deliver automated biodiversity monitoring, but networks are rarely deployed on scales that can offer truly novel insights due to scalability and standardisation challenges around collecting, managing, analysing, and sharing data.

3. Here we present the Transnational Acoustic Biodiversity Monitoring Network (TABMON), a standardised deployment of 97 autonomous sensors across Norway, Netherlands, France and Spain along a continental bird migration route. Audio is recorded continuously, uploaded in near real-time, and analysed with expert-validated artificial intelligence models to deliver Essential Biodiversity Variables compatible with established European monitoring efforts.

4. TABMON offers a blueprint for ambitious deployments of autonomous sensors that traverse national boundaries to transform biodiversity assessment and reporting globally.