This is how you can see the sound of a dying ecosystem. A soundscape ecologist visualizes the sound

Food Love

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00:00Every place in the world sounds unique.

00:08These soundscapes tell us a story about that place.

00:12They tell us the ways in which global warming is beginning to change the natural soundscape.

00:24Just before the sun rises at first light is the dawn chorus.

00:30The birds begin to sing and the insects and the amphibians and that's the time of day to go out and listen.

00:39I'm a soundscape ecologist and I record animals for a living.

00:43This is Sugarloaf State Park.

00:46Every spring I can probably be found there once a week recording in the same spot using the same kind of equipment

00:53so that I can repeat these recordings over and over again and compare them.

01:00And I have quite an archive of material which shows over time this habitat has been changing pretty radically

01:08as a result of global warming and the California drought.

01:13The first recording made in 2004 shows a very robust habitat with a signature of a stream.

01:25In 2014 things were changing radically. It was already the second year of the major drought in California.

01:35And in 2015 we had what I call a silent spring.

01:47Over 50% of my collection comes from habitats that are so radically altered

01:52they are either altogether silent or can no longer be heard in their original form.

01:57Here's an example from Costa Rica.

02:03That's before logging, this is after.

02:08Same spot.

02:17This is a coral reef, Venuolevu in Fiji.

02:21Part of it is dying and part of it is still living.

02:23Here's what the living part sounds like.

02:25Here's what the dying part sounds like.

02:32Hardly any fish sounds.

02:37We really don't know what this means in the long run.

02:44In the short run we're beginning to lose these soundscapes because the habitats are just changing so radically

02:50and we're partly to blame for that.

02:54When I first began to record almost 50 years ago

02:57I would go out into the field and just put on a pair of earphones and sit and listen

03:01because it made me feel good.

03:04It made me aware of the living world around me.

03:07And so I want to do anything that does that for me.

03:11If you want to do anything, I don't have to be scared of your body.

03:14In a full lifetime we've never met.

03:15It made me feel good.

03:16It's a great way to do everything.

03:17If it is, do something that blows up in the morning.

03:18I want to do anything that makes me feel good.

03:21I want to do something that does.

03:22I want to do something that does not know.

03:24Of course, you are.

03:26Some people that do something like it,

03:27and I can find myself as an animal.

03:28They're not doing anything.

03:29They might beный.

03:30They might be an animal with the animal.

03:31They might be a wild animal.

03:32I want to find or not to walk into it too.

03:34But I want to do something about a animal.

03:36I'll do something that I want to do something else,

03:37but I want to do something to tell.

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