Soil Acoustics has been awarded a £250,000 grant from DEFRA under Feasibility Round Two of the Farming Innovation Programme, delivered by Innovate UK, enabling us to undertake a two-year research project will explore the feasibility of using ecoacoustics to monitor soil health.
The DEFRA grant assessors were particularly impressed by the innovation and commercial potential of this approach, developed by one of our Founders and Directors, Dr. Carlos Abrahams.
One of the grant assessors remarked, “This is truly innovative and has been recognised as such by the industry. If successful, this solution will significantly improve on-farm data collection on soil health, supporting farmers as they implement actions to improve resilience, sustainability and productivity.”
Advancing Soil Health Monitoring with Sound
The project aims to develop a system for monitoring the activity of earthworms and other soil fauna in agricultural settings using bioacoustics. By analysing recordings of natural soil sounds at large scales, we aim to develop rapid processing methods to identify species and functional groups of soil organisms.
Soil Acoustics is leading this initiative in partnership with the University of Warwick Crop Centre. The research team, headed by Dr. Carlos Abrahams, will collaborate with Dr. Jacqueline Stroud, a leading expert in soil security and the role of earthworms as bioindicators.
The Importance of Earthworms in Soil Health
Healthy soils are fundamental to sustainable crop production and global food security. Earthworms play a crucial role in maintaining soil structure and fertility, benefitting ecosystems and supporting biodiversity. However, traditional methods of assessing earthworm populations require manual digging and counting, which is labour-intensive and time-consuming.
Our pilot studies have demonstrated that ecoacoustic techniques can detect and record the unique sounds produced by soil organisms, including earthworms. This approach allows for real-time biodiversity monitoring, providing a faster and more efficient method for assessing soil health. Instead of manually sampling soil, farmers can place probes in the ground to record soil sounds, which are then analysed using AI-driven algorithms to identify and quantify soil fauna.
Cutting-Edge Technology for Global Application
We have developed a Soil Acoustic Meter (patent pending) and ecoacoustic databases that enable data collected in the field to be benchmarked against reference samples. Our research will also leverage AI to deliver rapid sample analysis and reporting. This scalable approach has the potential to revolutionise soil health monitoring across agricultural landscapes worldwide and offers applications in habitat reforestation, Biodiversity Net Gain initiatives and rewilding projects.
Dr. Jacqueline Stroud, Assistant Professor of Soil Science at the University of Warwick, highlighted the enthusiasm within the farming community, “We’ve already received great support, with farmers donating model soils and earthworms to help us refine our measurements in the lab. Every day brings new discoveries. Earthworms produce rasping and rhythmic scrunching sounds as they move through the soil, and we can use these to detect them. This technology could be a game-changer for the agriculture industry.”
Andrew Baker, Founder and Director of Soil Acoustics, stated “Our data so far supports our hypothesis that a noisy soil is a healthy soil. This grant will allow us to build the scientific evidence behind our approach and develop a cutting-edge soil monitoring service that has the potential to disrupt the soil testing market.”
The overall aims of this project are to:
- Develop a prototype to rapidly record soil ecoacoustic data.
- Build a detailed library of acoustic signatures from earthworms and other macroinvertebrates in controlled experiments.
- Record soil soundscapes across different geographies and land management practices, linking them to earthworm distribution.
- Construct a large-scale soil sound database covering various UK soil types for benchmarking and analysis.
This ground-breaking project is set to transform soil health monitoring, providing farmers and land managers with an innovative, scalable and cost-effective solution. Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to advance the science of soil acoustics.
For more information about our research, get in touch via email at info@soilacoustics.com.
