This is scientific American 60 second science. I'm Christopher in Tagyatta.

Satellite imagery like Google Earth makes it easy for ecologists halfway around the world to check up on tropical forests.

See illegal roads and logging, stuff like that.

But the info is limited.

Satellite data often tells you what happens after it's happened.

Rhett Butler, the founder of Mongo

com, that's an environmental science news website.

In a prospective piece in the journal Science,

he and his colleagues write that sound recordings

could supplement satellite data as another conservation tool.

You can actually set up alerts and so you can hear things like chainsaws or gunshots in real time.

So you can get out ahead of a potential deforestation before it occurs.

Small audio recorders, some of which are solar-powered and hooked to cell phone grids for data

upload, also give ecologists the ability to eavesdrop on

a jungle's biodiversity over time.

If you're in a primary forest, you'll tend to see all the frequencies of a soundscape

occupied by different species.

So these are insects,

birds, calling mammals,

frogs, things like that.

As a comparison, here is a forest plot

after selective logging, meaning some trees were cut,

...