welcome back to boiler bytes have you
ever wondered
what an unfettered rain forest sounds
like or maybe you're curious about the
sounds of the shifting coastal tides
alaska
the world ecosystems are constantly
changing
and sound is a major part of every
ecosystem on earth
a group at Purdue led by Professor Bryan
Pijanowski
has been recording soundscapes from
around the world in order to archives
and study the
ever-changing sounds of our planet our
next segment will give you a look at
and a listen to what is happening at the
Center for Global soundscapes
a soundscape is a collection of all sounds
that
occur at a place. What we do is we try to
identify
three different kinds of sounds based
upon their sources it can be biological
geophysical and from anthropology
sources
so it's a sound composition and it depends on
the source of the sounds but as well as the
transmission of the sounds from the emission to you
you are the receiver of the sounds
biological organisms
need to produce sounds for a variety of reasons and so nature in
all of its splendor and beauty produces sounds
are phenomenally complex and we use those sounds
as an ecologist to understand
natural systems. So those are the
biological
sounds. And then there's the geophysical, this is the wind the water the thunder the avalanches
even the rumbling of
the ground. And then the third source is
the sounds that we make, humans.
 
 
there have been people talking about soundscapes
since about the nineteen sixties and most of
them
are in the fields of humanities
the
fields of music. So, it really wasn't
until
probably the late 1990s that ecologists
began to think about
using sound in more creative ways other than just
say putting a microphone out and recording birdsongs
the field the soundscape ecology is
virtually brand new
2011 was really the big splash. There was a
small group of us
put together these ideas in a paper and
got maybe 30 or 40 people around the world
who have kind of adopted this new paradigm of going out and
recording everything that we hear
analyzing everything that we hear
 
 
 
 
we have like the lab laboratory, Center
for Global Soundscapes
The object of the center is to
increase in knowledge about
soundscapes first and value eco-systems
and soundscapes of the ecosystems to be
able to conserve
the soundscape of the ecosystems we
place microphones out in the wild and
collect
sounds for long periods of time.
When we arrive on
an area
we analyze the area, choose a location
and put this recorder... and we let
them run
as long as we are in the field. So what
we have
are these what's called passive
automated recorders
there are boxes with two microphones sitting off to the
side, about the same spacing as our ears, so
when you record it, you put your headphones on it seems like your
just there, it's really cool and inside recorder
is a power supply and batteries and
then
chips that are very similar to the chips we
use in our cellphones
and then a programmable interface where
we can tell it to start and stop and what
all the parameters are
it's really easy you can just attach the box on a tree trunk
and then you close the box and you let
it run for as long as you want
We place these strategically across the
landscape
in ways that help us to understand
the diversity of the sounds that
occur there and then how it's related to the
diversity of habitat
you save all the data on the
computer so you need
a lot of space we have a big server
here at Purdue to do that
what we're generating
truly is big data and we can go toe to
toe with the physicist and genomics folks
that are generating massive amounts of
data
so Purdue is just ripe. We have the
cyberinfrastructure to do that kind of
work I can move terabytes of data around on this campus
without worrying about it. Purdue is a perfect place
to do this kind of work for a variety of
reasons. It does fit the STEM model:
science technology engineering and math
we do it all
what is interesting with soundscape it's at the middle of a lot of
domains of research. We're just
just so interdisciplinary. I have ecologists
social scientists
engineers and and musicians and we're
all working together to study
soundscapes
from all of our disciplinary perspectives. I want to see us build
a global library of soundscapes
where scientists can share
and begin to really fully appreciate
all the diversity of sounds that we have on
this planet. We've got a huge citizen
science effort
that's called record the earth, so every
Earth Day we try to get people to
whip out their cell phones download our app and
record their soundscape
upload it or server and listen and share.
We have
"Just Listen", an IMAX movie
that will be coming out sometime next
year. And what we're going to do is we're going to have kids
from grades five through seven
file into an IMAX movie theater and just
get
blasted by global soundscapes from all over
the place
I hope to inspire kids to go into STEM
and to really care more about nature
and to turn their ears back on.
if you want to listen to more global
soundscapes
or find out how you can get involved
with the center go online and check out
global soundscapes
dot org. That wraps up another Boiler Bytes
be sure to check us out online at boilerbytes.com
we'll see you next time
