The Beauty (and Science) of Nature's Sound
18. Got any old smartphones lying around? (8 min read)
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This week’s issue is less about reading, and more about listening. Because we’re going to discuss sound. The sounds of places far away, the sounds of creatures we rarely encounter, and the sounds of the vibrant life in some of the most pristine locations of our planet.
The sound of life.
I recently spent time reading about a growing scientific and conservation effort in “soundscapes”. A soundscape, much like a landscape, aims to capture not just sound, but its context of where and when it was recorded. A lot of you have already listened to recordings of calming nature sounds, birds and even coffeeshops (like coffitivity) on Youtube to either be productive or just relax.
These sounds are often heavily edited and sanitized for aesthetics, because that is its purpose. But the business of recording accurate soundscapes of nature- or more technically, bioacoustics (or “soundscape phenology”, in nerd-speak) is just getting started. And not only is this an exciting time for this field, the real-life impact is already here, and I am super optimistic about its future.
But first: why would we want to record sounds of forests, if not for entertainment?
The Science of Monitoring Life with Sound: Bioacoustics
In a way, it should surprise us that it has taken is this long to acknowledge the importance of sound. People talk. Pets interact with us using their own sounds. Cities are often known for their characteristic “bustle”, especially when you visit any major metropolis. The countryside has its own, albeit subdued, sound.
Sound is how we, as humans, perceive our external environment. Our eyes have a limited field of vision, but our ears can hear sounds of events near and far. They capture information on a much larger scale. Our ancestors used sound to judge threats, predators and weather. Sound is in imperfect measurement, but its often much easier to obtain than visual measurements, and enough to make decisions.
Yet, our modern culture is heavily biased towards vision: Everything has to be on photo or video for it to be documented and studied. And science has followed suit, especially in biology and natural sciences. But over the last few years, scientists have realized that our penchant for visual data - which is often slow, expensive and if not impossible to always obtain - has severely limited what we can understand about nature. Vast landscapes, such as densely covered rainforests are just not suited for cameras to see beyond a few feet.
But sound? It travels. Through dense Amazonian primary rainforests, through African Savannah, the Arctic tundra and the deepest oceans. And thanks to our digital revolution, we have microphones today in our smartphones that far exceed the best sound equipment scientists had a few decades ago.
And thus, the field of bioacoustics was born.
Meeting Animals With Sound And Software
An important question in the era where climate change is wrecking eco-systems and humans are meticulously stripping nature with resource extraction, is: How is the wildlife responding? Do we still have African elephants in healthy numbers? Are the endangered birds of the Amazon rainforest still able to survive despite illegal logging? There are so many species we would like to monitor to understand the “health” of the ecosystem.
Visual evidence of these animals, which is the current practice, is often too slow. By the time you realize that animal <insert any endangered species> has not been seen for a while, its already on its last legs as a species and closer to extinction.
Enter soundscapes. Scientists are now installing microphones deep in the forests, often high on tree branches, to record sounds of the area. Microphones are quite sensitive and hear a variety of sounds from several animals, birds, insects, streams and even machinery around (more on that soon).
Since sound travels everywhere, these listening devices are also deployed in the ocean. The data from these devices in forests or oceans is transmitted via satellite to computers, where scientists analyze them using artificial intelligence. Even an hour of soundscape has a LOT of information for a human to process.
But a software based on well-designed AI can do this in seconds. It can specifically tell you which sound came from which animal or bird. The software can tell us if that sound is from just one gorilla, or a family of them. It can also tell you if its an adult or a juvenile.
And the best part? these gorillas can be several hundred feet away, and microphone will still pick up the sound, while ALSO recording the sounds of tropical migrating birds in the pond nearby. The data is diverse and rich, in ways a video footage just isn’t. AI now makes it easy to sift through hours of them with minimal human intervention.
So why is bioacoustics relevant now more than ever? We finally have cheap electronics and advanced AI-based software that can quickly capture and analyze this data without much human intervention. Since my expertise is in AI, I can assure you this capability did not exist a few years ago.
Scientists now consistently record sensitive forests at risk from climate change and humans, so they have data on how the forests sound during various seasons. If the sound patterns start changing, it tells us that the wildlife in the forests have undergone a shift in the population.
Here are some fascinating stories:
Audio: Listen to the first-ever recordings of right whales breaking into song
The Elephant Listening Project in the rainforests of Congo, where 50 microphones are hidden in weather-proof boxes hanging from trees.
You can listen to excerpts of elephants and gorillas here.
If you are a researcher, they provide all 1 million hours of their recording for download “Sounds of Central African Landscapes”.
There is another advantage of these microphones: They record sounds which are outside the range of human hearing, which elephants often make. These are called “infrasounds”, and although we can’t hear it, we can “digitally hear” them with software, as seen below:
The sounds of the Indian Ocean Humpback Dolphin, recorded near Hong-Kong. Soundscapes are especially useful deep in the ocean where cameras have low visibility, but sound waves travel much faster in water than air!
A recent report from Cornell University reports:
One of our recent algorithms, called BirdNET, can identify calls from over 3,000 bird species with high precision,” Klinck said. “We are currently working on a project led by the University of Wisconsin-Madison to acoustically monitor avian biodiversity across the entire Sierra Nevada Mountain range using 2,000 recorders. This is one of the largest acoustic monitoring projects that has ever been conducted in the world.”
So…. There is a lot of momentum and we are just beginning to map how our world sounds like.
But how does this actually help us today?
“Sound” Conservation (and what you can do)
This is my favorite part!
Microphones capture not just sounds of the forest, but also those of humans operating machinery for illegal activities and guns to poach animals. It is extremely difficult to patrol vast areas of dense forests to prevent the criminals, but what if you have tiny mics hanging unseen high up in the trees? And what if it has a signal to connect to cellphone towers and satellite?
It can then identify sounds corresponding to illegal activities within seconds, and communicate the exact location to the forest authorities who can pay them an unpleasant visit. This is what the Rainforest Connection does in forests on multiple continents, and they have used old smartphones on their devices to do the listening and transmitting.
These are extremely sensitive microphones that can measure noises even 1.5 kilometers away. Several of these strategically placed can monitor large swathes of the forest in real-time… in a way even satellites and drones cannot effectively do. Rainforests are extremely dense, so any video or image-based approach is severely limited.
And the project has already seen success: Illegal poachers and loggers in Peru and Indonesia have already been caught in the act because of these devices, and better still.. the mere presence of these devices is now acting as a deterrent! They are small, hidden and hard to find… and therefore almost impossible for the criminals to hide from. Rainforest Connection has also released its software so that everyone can use it to analyze their nature recordings at https://arbimon.rfcx.org/
So far, around 1000 square miles of forests are under the protection of these devices. This number will only grow, as electronics get cheaper, and satellite, cellphone communication gets more widespread. Here’s the good news: You can help. They need donations to keep continuing the good work, and they have already shown how effective they are. Donation link.
So soundscapes can help with science and even with conservation. There is still one more use, and in some ways, this may be the most important of them all: Making us humans give a shit.
Ever Wondered How Truly Remote Forests Sound like?
Most of us have never been to the last truly wild places on earth, because most of them are deep in Amazon, the rainforests of Borneo and Papua New Guinea and in Central Africa. But a professional Romanian sound editor George Vlad has been on a mission to travel the places furthest away from any human-generated noise, to capture what a forest truly sounds like. Because he wants us to reconnect with our roots, and appreciate the rich life inhabiting there.
Human tendency is to ignore what we don’t see or hear, and this approach has decimated our forests for far too long. George takes great pains to ensure what you hear, is the purest form of a forest sound, unhindered by human intervention and unprocessed from unnecessary sound effects.
As I write this post, I am listening to one of his recordings from the Borneo rainforest on his Youtube channel, where he explains the circumstances of every audio.
Boy is it loud.
And beautiful. In a primal form that human-created music can never rival. Its the sound of our planet, and the millions of creatures we seldom think of before collectively signing their death warrant. And is a reminder of our humble roots way back in our past.
Maybe this is what our ancestors heard?
Thanks for reading. As always, let me know what you think below.
Although I was familiar with the sounds of nature stuff, I did not know about the depth of soundscapes and the fact that authorities are using this to catch poachers, is just so amazing! This is definitely a welcome break from the usual, kind of depressing, climate change deep dives from this newsletter haha :D
Wow, so fascinating. I haven't listened to the links yet, but I will. Do you know of Cosmo Sheldrake? He records the sounds of the soil, among other things: https://www.spun.earth/expeditions/patagonia (scroll down to the section Ear to the Soil). Amazing.