{Microphone records and plots bioacoustics: Image via Wired}
What if our landscapes could speak to us? How would our environmental relationships and connections change if our impacts received a verbal response? Perhaps we could finally answer the age old "If a tree falls in the woods" question.
Interestingly enough, scientists are intensifying studies to monitor ecosystems by microphoning and measuring biodiversity in soundscapes. Sounds of individual species have been the traditional area of focus, but as Michigan State University Ecologist Stuart Gage states:
"I'm not particularly interested in species. I'm interested in the biodiversity, species timing, habitat disturbances and communications issues. It's using sound as a metric to look at ecosystem dynamics."
Like the coal miner's canary, by audibly monitoring the eclectic sounds of nature, in accompaniment with Agro-Veillance, might provide us insight into forthcoming ecological demise. But to hear and comprehend the warnings takes time, technology, and expertise. I wonder if our ancestors and those less effected by swelling urbanism were more in tune and thus able to detect ecological shifts purely by sound. How about the health of cities? If scientists were to study acoustical patterns of street noise could an early detection be made of overpopulation and mass transit deficiencies.
There was a time we all had the inherent capability to listen and speak with nature, but at some point something was lost in translation and we simply stopped listening.
{Recorded microphone plots: images via: Wired}