We’re thrilled to be featured in a recent issue of The Guardian as part of their insightful soundscape series. Our Director of Bioacoustics, Carlos Abrahams, spoke with the publication about our ground-breaking ecoacoustic research in collaboration with the University of Warwick. Together, we’re exploring the sounds of the living soil beneath our feet—a fascinating area of study that could revolutionize how we monitor soil health.
Journalists from The Guardian joined Carlos and Jacqueline Stroud from the University of Warwick at Rothamsted Research, an agricultural research institution in Herefordshire, as they listened to the soundscapes beneath the earth. This forms part of a DEFRA-funded, two-year ecoacoustics project investigating the potential of using ecoacoustics to monitor soil health in a less invasive way than current methods.
The recordings gathered from the soil are being added to a database for analysis, where we follow the simple but powerful principle: a healthy soil is a noisy soil. The ecoacoustics technology we’re developing will help provide a more accurate, non-intrusive way to assess soil health compared to traditional techniques.
Our research is also contributing to the creation of the Soil Acoustic Meter (SAM), a portable device that allows users to easily collect soil sounds. This simple yet effective tool enables users to measure soil health by simply placing a probe in the ground to capture the acoustic signals. The SAM will be a game-changer for farmers, saving them time and effort compared to the labour-intensive process of digging sample pits and manually extracting soil samples.
It’s exciting to see ecoacoustics gaining more attention in the media, with past features on local BBC News, BBC Breakfast, BBC Radio 4 Today, The Times, and The Sunday Telegraph. We’re especially proud to have the team at Soil Acoustics leading the charge in uncovering the practical applications of this rapidly evolving ecoacoustics field.
You can read the full article in The Guardian here.
If you’re interested in how this cutting-edge approach, or our established above-ground ecoacoustic monitoring services, could benefit your project, we’d love to hear from you. Get in touch via email at info@soilacoustics.com or call 01629 593 958.
Photography: Graeme Robertson | The Guardian
