Wild Soundscapes: A Collection of Nature Recordings
“Acoustic ecology” is defined as the study of the relationship through sound between human beings and the environment. The discipline emerged in the late 1960s and 1970s with the World Soundscape Project in Canada. There are many freely available institution-based and crowd-sourced projects online today that allow us to transport to natural environments and get acquainted with the acoustics of the wildlife that inhabit them.
The Internet Bird Collection and The Macaulay Library Recordings
Photo by Mathew Schwartz via Unsplash
The Macaulay Library is a vast archive of nature and wildlife recording archives, predominantly featuring birds but also including amphibians, fishes, and mammals. The audio and video archives are available for research, academic, and commercial use.
PARKTRACKS
PARKTRACKS is an audio project produced by the National Park Foundation and the US National Park Service (NPS) which aims to create a tranquil experience through the natural and environmental sounds of state parks. It is a project of the NPS’ Natural Sounds and Night Skies Division.
Gavia Immer (Soundcloud)
Gavia Immer (meaning “common loon”) is the Soundcloud channel for Dr. Jacob Job’s nature sound recordings. Dr. Job manages the Listening Lab at the Sound and Light Ecology Team at Colorado State University, and contributes to the Natural Sounds and Night Skies Division of the National Park Service (NPS). This channel has expansive and diverse themed playlists of recordings, such as ‘Wind and Wave’, ‘Mammals,’ ‘Night Sounds’ (below), and more.
Sounds of the Forest Sound Maps
This ‘sound map’ offers user-contributed acoustic soundscapes from around the globe. Sounds of the Forest, in their words, “are collecting the sounds of woodlands and forests from all around the world, creating a growing soundmap bringing together aural tones and textures from the world’s woodlands.” These audio clips range from many places, such as:
The Redwoods of Santa Cruz, CA (recorded by Cheryl E. Leonard for the Sounds of the Forest)
Câmpu Cetății, Transylvania, Romania (recorded by Ferenc Szász / Hilda Kadarne Szasz for the Sounds of the Forest)
Tamin Negara National Park, Malaysia (recorded by Tony Baylis for the Sounds of the Forest)
The project is discussed at length in this article on Open Culture, Sounds of the Forest: A Free Audio Archive Gathers the Sounds of Forests from All Over the World
Free image via Unsplash
Sound and Light Ecology Team Collections
The Sound and Light Ecology Team is a group of scientists and educators researching how light and sound affect ecological processes. Based in the University of Colorado, it is linked to the NPS as well. Their page of recordings, Sounds of the Parks, offers wildlife and outdoor recordings from many American state parks.
Related: this short doc by the New York Times “How to Find Silence in a Noisy World” (2018) explores acoustic ecology with Gordon Hempton.
