What Does A Healthy Rainforest Sound Like?

Short Wave

NPR

Daily News, Nature, Life Sciences, Astronomy, Science, News

4.7 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 26 August 2020

⏱️ 13 minutes

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Summary

On a rapidly changing planet, there are many ways to measure the health of an ecosystem. Can sound be one of them? We dive into a new methodology that applies machine learning technology to audio soundscape recordings. Lead researcher Sarab Sethi explains how this method could be used to potentially predict ecosystem health around the world.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
0:05.4	A couple of years ago, scientist Serab Setti found himself in a tropical rainforest in Borneo,
0:11.8	an island in Southeast Asia.
0:14.0	He was part of a team installing solar panels on the tops of trees above the tree canopy,
0:19.2	a good place for those panels to soak up sunlight and power some very special devices,
0:24.5	more on those in a moment.
0:25.9	How high are we talking?
0:27.9	The highest I've been, it is up to 40 or 50 meters.
0:31.5	Oh my god.
0:33.0	Yeah.
0:34.0	40, 50.
0:35.0	I want to look at a 164 feet.
0:39.4	Yeah, yeah.
0:40.8	It's pretty hairy.
0:42.8	If you haven't got a head for heights, then.
0:45.8	Thankfully, he does.
0:47.8	But here's the thing you should know about Serab.
0:50.4	He's a postdoctoral researcher at Imperial College London and describes himself as, quote,
0:55.6	not a camper type of person.
0:58.2	Having grown up in a city environment his whole life, he's more accustomed to honking
1:01.9	cars and construction drills than the sounds of a tropical rainforest.
1:06.8	So imagine Serab settling in for his first evening at a remote campsite in Borneo when
	...

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