Capturing the Sound of the World? There's an App for That

Purdue University ecologist Brian Pijanowski wants to crowd-source the sounds of the planet on Earth Day.

Pijanowski is a soundscape ecologist, and he spends a lot of time listening. In a rainforest. In Borneo.

“I tell people I’ve got the greatest job in the world. I’ve been sitting out here all day with a microphone, listening to monkeys. Gosh, what a cool thing to do,” Pijanowski said.

Soundscape ecologists study the world with their ears – sounds can tell them a lot about the health of an ecosystem.

But Pijanowski doesn’t want to be the only one having all the fun – and that’s part of the idea behind his Global Soundscape Project. He and his colleagues at Purdue have developed a mobile app, so that people around the world can record and upload the sounds of their own little corner of the planet. Pijanowksi is not just interested in how places sound – he also wants to know how those sounds make us feel.

“They’re building a database of sounds around the world, but they’re also helping us scientists understand how people connect to the world through this acoustic link I think is really important,” he said.

The Internet brims with nature photographs, but it’s a little too quiet for Pijanowski.

“What we want to do is liven it up and bring nature in, in its fascinating glory, which I think is sound. I’m a little biased, I know.”

Pijanowski has catalogued thousands of sounds, from naturalist Aldo Leopold’s shack in Baraboo, Wis., to a spring thunderstorm in central Indiana, to the rainforest of Borneo, and thousands of places all over the world. And come Earth Day, he’s hoping for a million more contributions from citizen scientists everywhere. 

Listen to a 2011 interview with Pijanowski on NPR's Talk of the Nation Science Friday.