Do me a favor and stick your head out of the window of your apartment, or better yet, step outside for a minute. What do you hear? Is there human activity nearby that grabs your attention? Are there the sounds of birds, insects, perhaps a stray cat meowing off in the distance? Do you live near a body of water? If so, can you hear it ebbing and flowing? Does the noise of wind in the trees, also known as psithurism, drown out all of the above in a wash of high frequencies? These are questions related to our daily soundscapes on planet earth, a term coined by Michael Southworth and popularized by R. Murray Schafer.

A soundscape is defined as an acoustic environment as perceived by humans, both with our ears as well as with recording devices. Those who dedicate their lives to documenting and analyzing the various soundscapes of our planet are known as acoustic ecologists. Much like any other scientist in the field, the acoustic ecologist’s role is simply to observe, document, and hypothesize, often requiring both a technically and musically trained ear in order to discern the noises, pitches, and stereo images of a given soundscape. As we enter the 19th month of the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s worth taking a moment to put our acoustic ecologist hats, or ears, on and take a deep listen to the sonic effects of quarantine.

In order to properly analyze the soundscape of a pandemic, we need to understand how found sounds are categorized by ecologists. Composer, acoustic ecologist, and field recording pioneer Bernie Krause states in his pivotal text, Wild Soundscapes, that our soundscape can arguably be divided into 3 sections of sonic categorization, each with their own unique layers of subcategorization. On the surface we have anthropophony, meaning the sounds of human activity. While this term can be all encompassing to include every aspect of human life, many argue that this term deserves a distinction from technophony, or the sounds of man-made technology. Krause argues that while technology certainly affects all aspects of our global soundscape, the root cause of this noise is human activity, thus it falls under the anthropophony definition. Beneath the noises of man lie the noises of wildlife and other living organisms within our soundscape, this category is known as biophony. Through Krause’s own biophonic studies over several decades, he has managed to document the rate of extinction in various wildlife habitats due to tree logging and other man-made developments.

The final, and often most subtle layer of our soundscape is the original sound of the Earth, the Geophony, the sound of non-biological organisms found in our natural world. This includes the sounds of water, wind, fire, and the seismic activity of the Earth itself. What many may not realize is that with most categories of human activity, excess can lead to pollution. Just as air, water, and light can act as vehicles for the toxic aftermath of over industrialization, so can sound. The anthropophony of our planet has a direct impact on the sonic categories beneath it, affecting everything from wildlife to the sounds of the Earth’s core itself.

Two separate scientific studies of the Covid era, one at the beginning of lockdown and one in the Spring of 2021, have been conducted measuring the changes in seismic noise during Covid in various parts of the world. Both studies conclude that at the peak of lockdown, when travel, industry, and general outdoor human activity were at an all-time low, there was a reduction in seismic noise by nearly 50%, the largest reduction in recorded geophonic history. Many have referred to this drastic shift as the Global Quieting. The impact of human activity on the seismic geophony is not so much heard as it is felt, being that these seismic waves are measured between 1 to 20 Hz and the human ear only begins to perceive sound around the 40 Hz region. What this illustrates is that noise pollution affects the foundational crust of our planet through this constant rumble of activity.

While other acoustic ecologists spent their time in lockdown measuring both the lack of and return of human sonic activity in public places, a focus on audibility in soundscape studies only paints part of the picture. We as listeners need to use our entire bodies to observe these vibrations in air, water, and earth. Developing a sonic awareness as both ecologists and artists requires us to not only recognize and categorize the sounds of our environment by hearing them, but by feeling for them as well. That rumble in your house as a truck drives by or a helicopter flies overhead? That constant wall of noise by the overpass on your way to work? These are sounds our whole bodies can perceive on a daily basis, so let’s tune into them.

If you’re interested in reading more about acoustic ecology, look back at contributor Emma Cammell’s ‘The Acoustic Ecology of the New York MTA’ article.