Researcher Seeks to Capture "Acoustics of the Earth"

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

JEFFERSON CITY- Missourians have the chance to take part in a global project today designed to capture the earth's acoustics, one upload at a time. Led by Purdue University ecologist Bryan Pijanowski, "Global Soundscapes Day" encourages people from all walks of life to record the soundscapes of their world, and upload them to be shared and preserved.
He said it doesn't matter if the sound comes from birds chirping outside or cars zooming down the street.
"We want to capture the world as it is right now," the ecology professor declared. "Are we making this world really noisy, or are there still a lot of sounds that make us happy and inspire us to think more about nature and protecting it?"
Their goal is to capture up to 1 million recordings, he added. 
This is the first Global Soundscapes Day, and Pijanowski said they plan to hold it on Earth Day in future years, too. 
"We want to associate it with a day that's important to many of us that love the earth, and maybe after 10 years or even 20 years we'll have a really good idea of how the earth's acoustic environment is changing," he explained.
A global research group is helping to connect with other groups all over the world who are participating in today's event, Pijanowski said.
"I'm also communicating with a lot of people via Twitter and Facebook, so we have a lot of people that are 'liking' us and uploading the data," he reported. "I'm looking at uploads occurring all over the world. So, we're kind of getting the word out using social media and lots of other traditional means."
He is helping pioneer a research field aimed at preserving natural soundscapes and highlighting their role in alerting scientists and others to environmental habitat changes by species.
Soundscapes can be uploaded online at GlobalSoundscapes.org, where users also can listen to new recordings or to the existing library of 500,000 natural soundscapes from sites ranging from Indiana to Costa Rica and beyond.

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