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(Nature sounds)

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When I first began
recording wild soundscapes

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45 years ago,

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I had no idea that ants,

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insect larvae, sea anemones and viruses

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created a sound signature.

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But they do.

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And so does every wild
habitat on the planet,

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like the Amazon rainforest
you're hearing behind me.

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In fact, temperate
and tropical rainforests

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each produce a vibrant animal orchestra,

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that instantaneous
and organized expression

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of insects, reptiles,
amphibians, birds and mammals.

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And every soundscape
that springs from a wild habitat

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generates its own unique signature,

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one that contains incredible
amounts of information,

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and it's some of that information
I want to share with you today.

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The soundscape is made
up of three basic sources.

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The first is the geophony,

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or the nonbiological sounds that occur

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in any given habitat,

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like wind in the trees, water in a stream,

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waves at the ocean shore,
movement of the Earth.

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The second of these is the biophony.

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The biophony is all of the sound

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that's generated by organisms
in a given habitat

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at one time and in one place.

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And the third is all of the sound
that we humans generate

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that's called anthrophony.

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Some of it is controlled,
like music or theater,

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but most of it is chaotic and incoherent,

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which some of us refer to as noise.

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There was a time when
I considered wild soundscapes

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to be a worthless artifact.

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They were just there,
but they had no significance.

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Well, I was wrong. What
I learned from these encounters

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was that careful listening gives
us incredibly valuable tools

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by which to evaluate
the health of a habitat

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across the entire spectrum of life.

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When I began recording in the late '60s,

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the typical methods
of recording were limited

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to the fragmented capture
of individual species

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like birds mostly, in the beginning,

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but later animals
like mammals and amphibians.

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To me, this was a little like trying
to understand

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the magnificence
of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony

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by abstracting the sound
of a single violin player

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out of the context of the orchestra

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and hearing just that one part.

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Fortunately, more and more institutions

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are implementing the more holistic models

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that I and a few of my colleagues
have introduced

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to the field of soundscape ecology.

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When I began recording
over four decades ago,

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I could record for 10 hours

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and capture one hour of usable material,

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good enough for an album
or a film soundtrack

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or a museum installation.

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Now, because of global warming,

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resource extraction,

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and human noise, among many other factors,

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it can take up to 1,000 hours or more

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to capture the same thing.

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Fully 50 percent of my archive

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comes from habitats so radically altered

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that they're either altogether silent

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or can no longer be heard
in any of their original form.

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The usual methods of evaluating a habitat

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have been done by visually
counting the numbers of species

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and the numbers of individuals
within each species in a given area.

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However, by comparing
data that ties together

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both density and diversity
from what we hear,

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I'm able to arrive at much
more precise fitness outcomes.

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And I want to show you some examples

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that typify the possibilities unlocked

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by diving into this universe.

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This is Lincoln Meadow.

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Lincoln
Meadow's a three-and-a-half-hour drive

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east of San Francisco
in the Sierra Nevada Mountains,

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at about 2,000 meters altitude,

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and I've been recording
there for many years.

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In 1988, a logging company
convinced local residents

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that there would be absolutely
no environmental impact

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from a new method they were trying

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called "selective logging,"

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taking out a tree here and there

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rather than clear-cutting a whole area.

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With permission granted to record

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both before and after the operation,

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I set up my gear and captured
a large number of dawn choruses

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to very strict protocol
and calibrated recordings,

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because I wanted a really good baseline.

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This is an example of a spectrogram.

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A spectrogram is a graphic
illustration of sound

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with time from left
to right across the page --

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15 seconds in this case is represented —

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and frequency from the bottom
of the page to the top,

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lowest to highest.

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And you can see
that the signature of a stream

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is represented here in the bottom
third or half of the page,

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while birds that were once in that meadow

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are represented in the signature
across the top.

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There were a lot of them.

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And here's Lincoln Meadow
before selective logging.

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(Nature sounds)

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Well, a year later I returned,

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and using the same protocols

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and recording under the same conditions,

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I recorded a number of examples

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of the same dawn choruses,

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and now this is what we've got.

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This is after selective logging.

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You can see that the stream
is still represented

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in the bottom third of the page,

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but notice what's missing
in the top two thirds.

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(Nature sounds)

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Coming up is the sound of a woodpecker.

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Well, I've returned
to Lincoln Meadow 15 times

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in the last 25 years,

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and I can tell you that the biophony,

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the density and diversity
of that biophony,

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has not yet returned
to anything like it was

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before the operation.

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But here's a picture
of Lincoln Meadow taken after,

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and you can see
that from the perspective of the camera

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or the human eye,

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hardly a stick or a tree
appears to be out of place,

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which would confirm the logging
company's contention

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that there's nothing
of environmental impact.

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However, our ears tell us
a very different story.

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Young students are always asking me

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what these animals are saying,

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and really I've got no idea.

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But I can tell you that they do
express themselves.

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Whether or not we understand
it is a different story.

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I was walking along the shore in Alaska,

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and I came across this tide pool

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filled with a colony of sea anemones,

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these wonderful eating machines,

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relatives of coral and jellyfish.

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And curious to see
if any of them made any noise,

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I dropped a hydrophone,

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an underwater microphone
covered in rubber,

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down the mouth part,

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and immediately the critter began

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to absorb the microphone into its belly,

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and the tentacles were
searching out of the surface

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for something of nutritional value.

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The static-like sounds that are very low,

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that you're going to hear right now.

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(Static sounds)

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Yeah, but watch. When it
didn't find anything to eat --

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(Honking sound)

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(Laughter)

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I think that's an expression
that can be understood

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in any language.

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(Laughter)

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At the end of its breeding cycle,

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the Great Basin Spadefoot toad

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digs itself down about a meter under

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the hard-panned desert
soil of the American West,

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where it can stay for many seasons

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until conditions are just
right for it to emerge again.

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And when there's enough moisture
in the soil

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in the spring, frogs will dig
themselves to the surface

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and gather around these
large, vernal pools

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in great numbers.

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And they vocalize in a chorus

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that's absolutely in sync
with one another.

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And they do that for two reasons.

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The first is competitive,
because they're looking for mates,

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and the second is cooperative,

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because if they're
all vocalizing in sync together,

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it makes it really difficult
for predators like coyotes,

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foxes and owls to single
out any individual for a meal.

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This is a spectrogram
of what the frog chorusing looks like

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when it's in a very healthy pattern.

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(Frogs croaking)

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Mono Lake is just to the east
of Yosemite National Park

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in California,

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and it's a favorite
habitat of these toads,

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and it's also favored by U.S.
Navy jet pilots,

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who train in their fighters
flying them at speeds

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exceeding 1,100 kilometers an hour

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and altitudes only a couple hundred meters

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above ground level of the Mono Basin,

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very fast, very low, and so loud

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that the anthrophony, the human noise,

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even though it's six and a half kilometers

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from the frog pond you
just heard a second ago,

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it masked the sound
of the chorusing toads.

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You can see in this spectrogram
that all of the energy

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that was once in the first
spectrogram is gone

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from the top end of the spectrogram,

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and that there's breaks
in the chorusing at two and a half,

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four and a half,
and six and a half seconds,

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and then the sound
of the jet, the signature,

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is in yellow at the very
bottom of the page.

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(Frogs croaking)

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Now at the end of that flyby,

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it took the frogs fully 45 minutes

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to regain their chorusing synchronicity,

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during which time, and under a full moon,

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we watched as two coyotes
and a great horned owl

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came in to pick
off a few of their numbers.

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The good news is that, with a little bit
of habitat restoration

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and fewer flights, the frog populations,

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once diminishing
during the 1980s and early '90s,

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have pretty much returned to normal.

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I want to end with a story
told by a beaver.

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It's a very sad story,

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but it really illustrates how animals

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can sometimes show emotion,

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a very controversial subject
among some older biologists.

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A colleague of mine was recording
in the American Midwest

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around this pond that had been formed

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maybe 16,000 years ago at the end
of the last ice age.

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It was also formed in part by a beaver dam

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at one end that held
that whole ecosystem together

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in a very delicate balance.

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And one afternoon, while he was recording,

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there suddenly appeared
from out of nowhere

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a couple of game wardens,

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who for no apparent reason,

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walked over to the beaver dam,

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dropped a stick of dynamite
down it, blowing it up,

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killing the female and her young babies.

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Horrified, my colleagues remained behind

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to gather his thoughts

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and to record whatever he could
the rest of the afternoon,

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and that evening, he captured
a remarkable event:

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the lone surviving male beaver
swimming in slow circles

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crying out inconsolably for its
lost mate and offspring.

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This is probably the saddest sound

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I've ever heard coming from any organism,

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human or other.

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(Beaver crying)

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Yeah. Well.

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There are many facets to soundscapes,

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among them the ways in which animals
taught us to dance and sing,

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which I'll save for another time.

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But you have heard how biophonies

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help clarify our understanding
of the natural world.

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You've heard the impact
of resource extraction,

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human noise and habitat destruction.

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And where environmental
sciences have typically

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tried to understand
the world from what we see,

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a much fuller understanding
can be got from what we hear.

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Biophonies and geophonies
are the signature voices

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of the natural world,

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and as we hear them,

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we're endowed with a sense of place,

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the true story of the world we live in.

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In a matter of seconds,

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a soundscape reveals much more information

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from many perspectives,

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from quantifiable data
to cultural inspiration.

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Visual capture implicitly frames

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a limited frontal perspective
of a given spatial context,

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while soundscapes widen that scope

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to a full 360 degrees,
completely enveloping us.

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And while a picture may
be worth 1,000 words,

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a soundscape is worth 1,000 pictures.

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And our ears tell us

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that the whisper
of every leaf and creature

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speaks to the natural
sources of our lives,

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which indeed may hold the secrets
of love for all things,

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especially our own humanity,

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and the last word goes
to a jaguar from the Amazon.

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(Growling)

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Thank you for listening.

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(Applause)