March 10, 2024

Hi and welcome to newsletter #38 of OneBeautifulPlanet.org!

This message goes to my 194 subscribers, with a big Thank you for signing up. If you have just subscribed, check out the weekly Newsletter archive. I wrote the first issue in June 2023, and an overview of the weekly effort at the 100th subscriber milestone.

Bernie Krause

I start every weekly message with a person, animal, or plant that inspired or intrigued me. It is a moment of reflection and gratitude, meant to find lessons and nurture curiosity. Last week I featured Friedel Klussmann, while previous weeks included animals like the albatross, the oyster, and the bison, and luminaries such as Buckminster Fuller and Sylvia Earle.

With spring come leaf blowers and soon lawnmowers across Pennsylvania neighborhoods. Given this noise and sound pollution, let’s remind ourselves of the important work of Bernie Krause, a pioneer in the field of soundscape ecology: the discipline that explores the acoustic environment and its relationship with ecosystems.

Krause added a new dimension in the study of nature, by emphasizing the importance of sound in ecological conservation. For over 40 years, he has collected almost 5,000 hours of sound recordings of natural habitats, both terrestrial and marine, inhabited by almost 15,000 animal species. His research offers an awe-inspiring immersion into the sound universe of animals, otherwise known as biophony.

Born in 1938, in Detroit, Michigan, Bernie Krause developed an early fascination with nature and music. From 1957, he worked as a recording engineer and producer in Ann Arbor while an undergraduate student. He then pursued a career as a professional musician and acoustician, working with renowned artists such as The Weavers, The Doors, and Van Morrison.

In the late 1960s, Krause collaborated with physicist Paul Beaver to pioneer the development of the Moog synthesizer, contributing significantly to the evolution of electronic music. Krause's transition from a successful music career to sound ecology was later catalyzed by his encounters with the sounds of nature during recording sessions. He realized that these sounds held immense ecological significance and began to explore the field of bioacoustics.

Krause made his first field recording in 1968 in the Muir Woods north of San Francisco, just after signing a Warner Brothers record deal. A successful electronic musician at the time, he was collecting sounds for In a Wild Sanctuary, a 1970 album remembered as a novel experiment in combining instruments with wilderness recordings and synthesizers.

After contributing to the score of Apocalypse Now in 1979, Krause earned a PhD in bioacoustics and spent the next decades retreating into the field and simply listening, waiting patiently for the revelations to emerge. An epiphany struck him one night in Africa in 1983 as he started to hear the origins of human music in the rhythm and percussion of the natural world. “This is an orchestra,” he thought. “This is what enables us to dance and sing.”

Krause's extensive fieldwork has taken him to some of the most remote and biodiverse regions on the planet, from the Amazon rainforest to the Arctic tundra. His books, including "The Great Animal Orchestra" and "Voices of the Wild," have garnered critical acclaim and reached audiences worldwide.

One of Krause's most significant contributions is the concept of "biophony," which refers to the collective sound produced by all living organisms in a particular habitat. He identified distinct patterns and rhythms within biophonies, revealing the web of relationships between animals and their environments. Krause also coined the term "geophony" to describe the natural sounds generated by non-biological sources such as wind, water, and geological processes.

Krause's decades-long research allowed him to capture changes that are too subtle for us to notice in everyday life. Highlighting the impact of human activities on acoustic environments, he documented the phenomenon of "soundscape degradation," wherein human-induced noise pollution disrupts natural soundscapes, with detrimental effects on wildlife behavior and ecological processes.

Bernie Krause's journey from musician to sound ecologist exemplifies the transformative power of curiosity and interdisciplinary pursuits. As we face the challenges of the Anthropocene, Krause's work is another reminder of their multifaceted nature. What would spring be without birds singing? What would ponds be without frogs? What would the night be like without crickets? The profound interconnectedness between sound, nature, and humanity is another aspect that we should actively consider in our environmental conservation efforts.

Sources:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernie_Krause

• https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/jun/14/bernie-krause-sound-ecologist-disappearing-world

Mindset

“The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature.”

— Anne Frank

In the Works

On the action front, last week’s event at the Neshaminy State Park on the Pennsylvania bank the Delaware River was a hard act to follow! That said, it is my commitment to organize, attend, or just carry out a small cleanup by myself at least weekly.

So this week I took advantage of the extra hour Saturday morning, a day before the Daylight Savings time change. In about 45 minutes, I cleaned up the north end of the Cynwyd Heritage Trail, an area I tended to just a few weeks ago.

It was good to return here, and find overall less litter than before. I gathered two large bags of mostly consumer packaging, plus some car parts and random plastic bags, totaling about about 15 lbs.

On the knowledge gathering front, while learning about Bernie Krause’s work, I came across neologisms such as geophony (sounds made by Earth natural phenomena, such as winds, waves, or earthquakes), biophony (sounds made by animals), and anthropophony (sounds made by humans and their creations). I added these to my growing collection of key terms for the amateur environmentalist:

If you found this newsletter helpful or interesting, please share with your friends, contacts, and anyone you know who may benefit from following my journey.

Let’s gain some knowledge, and take action toward a cleaner, healthier world!

Thank you.

Razvan