Introducing our Soil Acoustic Meter

A healthy soil is a noisy soil™

Soil health is a global issue, influencing crop yields, food security, carbon sequestration and ultimately the health of the whole ecosystem.

Farmers and conservationists need effective ways of measuring how their actions are having an effect on the health of their soils.

Spectogram video medley of soil sounds including recordings from a healthy soil; a stridulating beetle larvae; and then an earthworm moving through the soil.

With advancements in machine learning technology and the availability of low-cost programmable recorders, ecoacoustics has emerged as a powerful tool for surveying and monitoring biodiversity in many habitats – now including soil.

Whether you are an agronomist, arable or pastural farmer, land or estate manager, food producer, winegrower, or managing a rewilding, or agro-forestry project, soil health will be important to you. You are probably already measuring soil organic carbon, pH, bulk density and any number of other metrics on a regular basis and submitting these lab results to a toolkit or portal. You may even be digging worm pits to count earthworms.

How the Soil Acoustic Meter works

The Soil Acoustic Meter (SAM) records the sounds of invertebrates moving and making noise within the topsoil. By measuring the amount and diversity of the sound made by worms, beetles, ants and other organisms the biological health of the soil can be assessed.

Ecoacoustics is the exciting new way to quickly collect this data from the field, without having to send any soil samples away for analysis.

The testing process

The SAM is easy to use. A hand-held data recorder with a probe that is pressed into the soil with a sampling protocol aligned with the AHDB guidelines for worm-pits (around ten samples per setting). When you have finished the sampling session, plug the unit into a computer (standard USB C connector) login and upload the batch of data to the customer portal. The automated reports will be available after 48 hours, giving fast insights into the biological health of your soil.

Meet the team

Soil Acoustics is a team of specialists with extensive experience in developing and applying innovative and scientific technologies in the field of ecology and conservation.