Eco-Sound

Perspectives: Research and Creative Activities at SIUC, Fall 2007

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ECO-SOUND

Through acoustic ecology, science and art can work together for environmental conservation.

The call of a toucan. The gruff, startling cries of howler monkeys. A chorus of cicadas. The percussion of bamboo canes clattering against each other in the wind.

A warning horn far in the distance, followed by the bass rumble of dynamite blasts. The crescendo of a jet coming in for a landing a few miles away.

container ship in Panama Canal as seen from EcoParque Panama

All are part of the "soundscape" of EcoParque Panama, where the manmade world presses up against a largely pristine lowland tropical rainforest. In an innovative interdisciplinary venture, forestry professor Andrew Carver and radio-television professor Jay Needham spent last spring break recording some of the ambient sounds of the park, which occupies about 1,000 acres of ridges and valleys on the west side of the Panama Canal, almost directly across from Panama City.

SIUC is heavily involved in the park's exploration, development, and conservation. The site is home to harpy eagles, two- and three-toed sloths, titi monkeys, ocelots, margays (similar to but smaller than ocelots), jaguars, kinkajous, and many other fascinating species, some of which are threatened or endangered.

"This is an ecological treasure, one of the most biologically diverse areas in the world," says Carver, who specializes in land use planning and was instrumental in the park's establishment. "You can have more than 10 times the number of tree species per acre than in Illinois forests."

For their initial sound survey, Needham and Carver spent 15 to 16 hours daily on site, at all hours.

"You have to be there when the sounds are," Carver says. "If you aren't out there at 5 a.m., you'll miss the howler monkeys. And there's a lot of activity at night."

Needham, an artist, producer, and composer who specializes in radio documentaries and other forms of sound art, is especially interested in what he calls "long-form listening": monitoring the sounds of a place—be it a busy city street or an isolated wilderness—over days, weeks, and seasons to catch its full texture and how it changes over time. Documenting the environment of sounds that people and animals inhabit, he explains, is a well-developed discipline called acoustic ecology.

Many of us have benefited from one product of acoustic ecology: "natural sound" CDs for relaxation or meditation. But the field has a surprising number of branches and applications.

Among them: It studies how ambient noise affects individuals, culture, and society. It underlies policy decisions regarding noise abatement programs.

It provides raw material for composers and sound designers, allowing those artists to create works using the sounds of a given environment. To preserve a record of our natural heritage, it documents "endangered soundscapes," like that of the tropical jungle, before they disappear.

Acoustic ecology also enables research on animal communication, as well as animal surveys like those being done in EcoParque. And it offers a way to track ecosystem health over time. Sound studies, for example, have documented the decline of amphibians in many areas worldwide.

Carver and Needham will be using the EcoParque recordings to identify species and learn about species abundance. They also want to study the intensity, duration, and location of manmade noise (the jets, blasting for the Panama Canal expansion, etc.) and how that is affecting the park's animals and visitors.

"Listening to the sounds of an environment can reveal a great deal about the ways that nature and our technologically driven culture have intermixed," Needham says.

The park evolved out of the final handover of Canal Zone land by the United States to the Panamanian government in 1999. Jerry Bauer, an SIUC forestry alumnus and assistant director of the U.S. Forest Service's International Institute of Tropical Forestry, invited Carver down in 2001 to assess the institute's ecotourism programs in Panama. While there, Carver recruited Nestor Correa, the director of one of Panama's most important national parks, to come to SIUC for his master's degree in forestry.

Carver also met Ricardo Barria, an SIU-Edwardsville alumnus from Panama who belonged to a local civic group interested in conservation—the Panama Northeast chapter of Rotary International. The efforts of these four people helped lead to the designation of part of a former U.S. military base as EcoParque Panama.

With the exception of some roadways, most of the site was undeveloped. Because it had been off-limits to Panamanians, Carver says, no one knew what incredible biodiversity the site had—diversity that, ironically, had been preserved as an accident of politics.

Carver's research in Panama began with a social-science project co-led by forestry professors Jean Mangun and Cem Basman. Two graduate students in forestry, Brooke and Richard Thurau, went to Panama to survey cruise ship passengers about their interest in ecotourism activities, which could help support conservation efforts. "On average, these tourists really desired adventure and ecotourism—more than we thought they would," Carver says.

The push for the park began in earnest when, for his master's thesis, Correa conducted a needs assessment of nonprofit conservation organizations in Panama. He looked at the problems they face and what they need to succeed at environmental preservation.

Then, on behalf of the Panama Rotary chapter, he and Carver put together a proposal to establish the park. They had the backing of the chancellor of the University of Panama, who headed the government agency responsible for the disposition of former U.S. land within the Canal Zone.

In 2004, Panama issued two resolutions creating and protecting the park. With Panama City expanding rapidly, the government wanted to preserve the land as a buffer between the canal and the much larger extent of tropical forest to the north and west.

"By protecting the park, they felt they could better protect the rest of the forest," Carver says. If the land were deforested, the seasonal rains would stop—and the rains are crucial to the viability of the canal.

Although the park is expected to draw eco-tourists, Carver stresses that it will be developed so that Panamanians, most of whom "can't afford tourist prices," will have a place to go for environmental learning, recreation, and solitude.

Panama City, he notes, offers few green spaces for its citizens.

With funding from the International Institute of Tropical Forestry, SIUC has been doing research to document the park's wildlife. In 2005, zoologists Eric Schauber and Clay Nielsen assisted with the installation of a network of remote cameras on site. When an animal trips a camera's motion or heat sensors, the camera begins taking pictures at regular intervals.

But remote cameras have limitations. In the dense rainforest vegetation, lines of sight are narrow and patchy. And that's where sound has an advantage: 360-degree coverage over a wide area. It can go a long way in telling you "who's there and how many," Needham says.

After a successful pitch to SIUC's Global Media Research Center for some startup funding, he and Carver began their collaboration with the sound-survey trip over spring break. "It's the first project of this kind for the center," says Needham, who received seed funding from his department and college as well.

Besides research, the two plan to use the recordings to advance environmental education. By the time this issue of Perspectives comes out, a CD titled "Dry Season—Edition 1," drawn from the recordings done last March, will have been produced by the Global Media Research Center. "It's a sound portrait of the park at a particular time of year," Needham says, adding that the CD will be packaged with explanatory notes in Spanish and English.

The idea is that conservation organizations in Panama could use the CD as a fundraising tool. It also could be used as a teaching tool on site, Needham says, in classes or community-based environmental workshops. He's donating the sound files to the Pan-American Conservation Association (APPC), which manages the park in cooperation with the Panama Rotary.

Jay Needham and Yiscel Yanguez record sounds in the park

Many of the Panamanians with whom the team is working have a nostalgic response to the recordings, which contain sounds they remember from their childhood but haven't heard in years, due to development.

"These sounds are very specific to Central America and are part of a cultural and natural heritage that is quickly changing," Needham says. "To visitors, they're very unique."

While Needham was editing the raw sound files, Carver was spending part of the summer in Panama—analyzing data, installing new cameras, and working closely with the International Center for Sustainable Development, the APPC, and other partners in the project.

He and Correa, who's now a doctoral student in zoology, are developing plans for trails, facilities, and an interpretive center for the park. Needham's sound recordings can help here, too—for example, in the development of "sound walks" where people are likely to hear certain kinds of animals.

Both Carver and Needham are invigorated by this scientific/artistic collaboration between SIUC's College of Agricultural Sciences and College of Mass Communication and Media Arts and are working to broaden it.

Brooke Thurau, who will be MCMA's first interdisciplinary doctoral student in many years, will create a documentary video about the park and will do social-science research on conservation issues associated with it. Carver and John Downing, director of the Global Media Research Center, will co-chair her dissertation committee. And Needham and Carver are developing a dual-listed field course focusing on how conservation science and media arts can join forces for environmental activism.

Needham and Carver plan to return to EcoParque Panama to make more recordings at different times of the year. They and their students will work with local Panamanian conservation organizations to catalog the insects, birds, and mammals heard on the recordings.

"Some of these animals are so rare," Carver says. "Capturing these sounds is an important contribution for future study."

Even though Carver had visited the park many times over the years, he found he had a lot to learn about its acoustic environment.

"I got a crash course in listening," he says. "By partnering with Jay, I was forced to concentrate on the sounds, and it was an amazing experience."

—by Marilyn Davis