Photo: Baker Consultants Ltd. via Living on Earth.
Listening to sounds in the soil is a minimally invasive way to measure biodiversity underground.
Remember when you were a kid and thought millipedes and bugs in general were icky?
It turns out, those tiny critters in the soil help to make the planet healthy. Just listen to them.
From Luca Ittimani at the Guardian: “Ever wondered what the Earth sounds like? New research suggests healthy soil has a distinctive soundtrack of its own – the crackles, pops and clicks of ants and worms bustling around underground.
“Scientists from Australia’s Flinders University listened to microphones planted in the ground to see if invertebrate instrumentals are a good indicator of biodiversity and soil health. Land filled with plants and tiny animals carried diverse underground sounds, while cleared land only had bland white noise, they found.
“ ‘It’s a bit like going to the doctor,’ the ecologist Dr Jake Robinson said. ‘They put a stethoscope on your chest, take a health check, listen to your beating heart … we’re doing something similar in the soil.’ He said the effectiveness of the microphone method could make it easier for researchers, conservationists and farmers to find and fix soil degradation. …
“Insects and other invertebrates build up soils, improve their nutrient content and prevent erosion, so their presence is a good indication of soil health.
Soil full of worms carries low bubbly sounds, while lighter, six-legged ants make frequent higher-pitched clicks, Robinson said.
“ ‘A millipede has lots of tiny legs and they make little tapping sounds, whereas the snail has a more slimy glide sound,’ he said.
“Because the noises cannot be heard by the human ear, scientists set up microphones that pick up vibrations from contact with the dirt – then amplify the recording by 20 decibels. …
“Robinson and his colleagues reviewed hundreds of hours of recordings from 240 locations around Mount Bold in South Australia, near Adelaide, adding to previous research in the UK. … The new study confirmed the acoustic method worked just as well as traditional methods of checking soil health, which include expensive DNA testing or destructive methods such as digging up the soil or laying traps for invertebrates. …
“Audio tech may even be able to improve soil health. Robinson’s forthcoming research found playing certain sound frequencies can speed up growth of fungi and bacteria that fend off plant diseases.”
At the Guardian, here, you can listen to healthy soil. Similarly, at Living on Earth, here, or at The World, here.
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