The soundscape team from Purdue has posted 20,950 audio recordings from 10 sites around the reserve. They're 10 minutes a piece, so to hear them all you'll want to carve out 145.5 days of uninterrupted listening time.
World Listening Day is July 18. I'd never heard of it until this week, when listener extraordinaire Bryan Pijanowski mentioned it during his noontime talk in the auditorium. Dr. Pijanowski is in town for the Global Sustainable Soundscapes Network's coastal workshop, which includes a site tour here today.
If we look around, we can watch the natural world disappearing right before our eyes. The good news is that those rates of loss have been worse in the past. The bad news is that what we see disappearing isn’t the only thing we’re losing. It turns out, the sounds of the natural world are fading too.
Last week we set up acoustical equipment in 12 locations throughout the reserve, typically about 40 feet off the trails. The equipment will create an ecological soundscape of habitats… mapping sounds of animals and other living things (biophony), sounds coming from wind in the trees, rain, and the ocean (geophony), and sounds of jet planes, people talking, trains, gunshots, and lawnmowers (anthrophony). Together, these recordings will help describe our environment over time… who is there, who is missing, what is disturbed, what has changed.
Will these soundscapes reveal habitats of vitality or quiet? What changes happen over time? Is the food web diminishing or increasing with new animals, returning animals? Are the sounds different from year to year, day to day, month to month, season to season?
Larissa Holland
