- Mongabay’s podcast often explores the burgeoning field of bioacoustics, and an important subset of this discipline is the recording of soundscapes.
- Healthy ecosystems are often noisy places: from reefs to grasslands and forests, they are sonically rich ecosystems, thanks to all the species present.
- Sound engineer George Vlad travels extensively and in this special episode he plays recordings of soundscapes from the Javari Valley in Brazil and a rainforest glade in the Congo Basin, and describes how they were captured .
- Recording the soundscapes of these places is a way to ensure that we don’t forget what a full range of birds, bats, insects and many other sounds sound like, despite the crisis. of biodiversity.
Healthy ecosystems are often noisy places: from reefs to grasslands and forests, they are rich in sound thanks to all species defending territories, finding mates, locating prey or perhaps taking advantage of the ability to add to the rich chorus of life.
Recording soundscapes of such places is a way to ensure that we don’t forget what a full range of birds, bats, insects and many other sounds sound like, and that doesn’t could not be more important, as the world is witnessing a decline in many of these types. creatures, due to the biodiversity crisis.
So in this episode of the podcast, host Mike G. plays a diverse selection of forest soundscapes from South America and Africa and discusses them with their creator, sound engineer George Vlad, who travels a lot and shares the acoustic alchemy of nature via its Youtube channel. .
Listen now:
Research shows that younger generations of people are often unaware of declining bird and insect populations, either visually or audibly, and therefore often believe that the current sights and sounds around them are the natural state of landscapes. This “ecological oblivion” is called “shifting baseline syndrome”, and one way to reverse it is to record soundscapes.
The episode features recordings from Brazil’s Javari Valley and an African “bai” (a natural clearing in the rainforest).
Join us to explore these soundscapes with Vlad and get inspired to find the wealth of natural sounds near you.
Here is related audio from a very popular episode from May 2020 which featured recordings of forest elephants in a bai in the Central African Republic:
In 2018, the podcast featured a discussion of soundscape phenology and the emerging role it plays in the study of animal behavior and landscape ecology, listen to it here:
Listeners interested in soundscapes and bioacoustics can explore more examples here:
• Audio: The sounds of tropical katydids and how they can benefit conservation, 22/01/20
• Audio: How listening to individual gibbons can benefit conservation, 11/26/19
• Audio: What underwater sounds can tell us about Indian Ocean humpback dolphins, 3/19/19
• Audio: The superb mimicry skills of an Australian songbird, 21/08/18
Subscribe or follow the Mongabay Newscast wherever you get your podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, you can also listen to all episodes here on the Mongabay website or download our free app for Apple and Android devices to access the end fingers to new shows and all our previous episodes.
Follow Mike Gaworecki on Twitter here: @mikeg2001
Banner image: A crooked hornbill, a species endemic to the Philippines, that sings. Image by Olaf Oliviero Riemer via Creative Commons (CC BY 3.0).
Related audio here at Mongabay:
Podcast: Forest Conservation for Climate Advocacy and Cultural Preservation
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