The science of sound

Scientists, conservationists and other researchers are using audio soundscapes in innovative ways to record the natural world in rich detail and help develop strategies to preserve it. Gaia Vince visits the Dear Earth exhibition at London’s Southbank Centre where she interacts with the ‘Tell It To The Birds’ artwork by Jenny Kendler. This piece transforms spoken word into birdsong, which Jenny hopes will help raise awareness of threatened species. She is joined by Dr Patricia Brekke from the Zoological Society of London who reveals more about the threats faced by birds. We then visit the Knepp Estate to meet ecologist Penny Green, who reveals more about the value of audio for her work. Gaia then speaks to Dr Alice Eldridge, an acoustics expert from the University of Sussex, who has spearheaded the Wilding Radio project at the Knepp Estate in Sussex. She was curious to find out whether the sounds in the environment would change following the introduction of beavers to the estate. In collaboration with arts cooperative Soundcamp, she built high-quality, solar-powered equipment to continuously broadcast the soundscape from above and below the water. While we can record animals which we currently share the world with, what about those that have been lost forever? Cheryl Tipp, the British Library’s curator of wildlife and environmental sounds, looks after the library’s audio collection of more than 250,000 species and habitat recordings. She shares the heartbreaking tale of a now-extinct bird and explains why sound is such a valuable resource. Finally, Dr Tim Lamont, a marine biologist from Lancaster University, tells us why a degraded coral reef sounds different from a healthy one. He explains how broadcasting the sounds of a healthy reef can help attract more marine wildlife to an area. Presenter: Gaia Vince Producer: Hannah Fisher Content Producer: Alice Lipscombe-Southwell Editor: Richard Collings