Bioacoustics and the Environment

 

Insects, Trees, and Climate:

The Bioacoustic Ecology of Deforestation and

Entomogenic Climate Change

Documentation:

    Hidden Fragility of Complex Systems---—Consequences of Change, Changing Consequences

    Insects, Trees, and Climate:

        The Bioacoustic Ecology of Deforestation and Entomogenic Climate Change

    Entomogenic Climate Change

    The Sound of Light in Trees: The Acoustic Ecology of Pinyon Pines


In the News:

    La música de los árboles en la gran ciudad,

        La Vanguardia, 1 October 2008, Barcelona, Spain

    Jim Crutchfield & David Dunn Interview, Barcelona TV

    Jim Crutchfield & David Dunn Interview, El Periodico

    en RESONÀNCIA

        —Encontre Internacional Noves Fronteres de La Ciencia,

            L’Art I El Pensament

        La Pedrera, Barcelona, Spain

            29, 30 September, & 1 October 2008

        Cosas de la vida, El Periodico, 1 October 2008

    Al Gore cites SFI research on Meet the Press, INSIDE SFI, September 2008

    “Pop Chirp Bite Crunch Chew”, Science News 174:5 (30 August 2008)

    Al Gore describes entomogenic climate change

        on Meet The Press, 20 July 2008

    Mountain pine beetle and forest carbon feedback to climate change

        Nature 452, 987-990 (24 April 2008)

    Composer Records Beetles to Mark Climate Change

        David Dunn Interview, National Public Radio, 10 March 2008

    Osmosis: What can the Arts do for the Sciences, Jim Crutchfield,

        Berkeley Big Bang, Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive,

        UC Berkeley, 3 June 2008

    Mutamorphosis: Challenging Arts and Sciences,

        Prague, Czech Republic, 8-10 November 2007


Related News:

  New York Times: 18 November 2008

    Bark Beetles Kill Millions of Acres of Trees in West

  New York Times: 29 April 2008

    The Beetle Factor in a Carbon Calculus

  New York Times: 29 December 2007

    A Rocky Mountain Low

  New York Times: 11 July 2007

    Balmy Weather May Bench a Baseball Staple

  New York Times: 9 June 2007

    As Beetle Threatens, 10,000 Staten Island Trees Die by Chain Saw


People:

    Jim Crutchfield, Physicist

    David Dunn, Composer


Collaborators:

    Richard Hofstetter, Forest ecologist
    Jayne Yack: Neuroethologist

        Home page

        Battling Beetles: Research on beetle communication leads to new infestation controls





Exercise:

Google Earth tour of beetle deforestation:

1. Start up Google Earth and fly to British Columbia, Yukon Territory, and Alaska

  1. 2.Catalog the number of bright red forest patches; these are regions of dying pines.

  2. 3.Next to these patches you’ll see grey areas, these are already dead pines.

 
Accumulating observational evidence suggests an intimate
connection between rapidly expanding insect populations, deforestation, and global climate change. We review the evidence, emphasizing the vulnerability of key planetary carbon pools, especially the Earth's forests that link the micro-ecology of insect infestation to climate. We survey current research regimes and insect control strategies, concluding that at present they are insufficient to cope with the problem's present regional scale and its likely future global scale. We propose novel bioacoustic interactions
between insects and trees as key drivers of infestation population dynamics and the resulting wide-scale deforestation. The bioacoustic mechanisms suggest new, nontoxic control interventions and detection strategies.