Published on Jul 29, 2015 
 
 Bernie Krause has been recording the sounds of Sugarloaf park for many years. Here is a comparison of sounds from 2004 through 2014 showing the drastic effects of the drought on our local ecology. ||||| Bernie Krause has noticed a decline in the sounds of water in Sugarloaf Ridge State Park. Photo: Eugene Kim/Flickr 
 
 Morning comes bright and dry to the Mayacamas Mountains on the eastern edge of Sonoma County, near the heart of Northern California wine country. Bernie Krause, a 77-year-old pioneer in the field of soundscape ecology, has been up for hours, sitting at his favorite spot in Sugarloaf Ridge State Park, his ears tuned to the awakening day. What he’s hearing is absence, the quiet of loss. 
 
 Krause is nestled in a valley, surrounded by scrub vegetation, oak trees, and alders. One hundred paces to his right, a tripod mounted with microphones stands in a shrinking patch of shade cast by thirsty oaks and alders. Fifty paces to his left, the five-foot-wide bed of Sonoma Creek twists through brush, its stones coated with a fine layer of dust. Krause remembers the quick, rambunctious flow of wetter years, the silvery song of ripples and cascades. For the past few years, however, warmer days arrive earlier in the year, and vegetation cycles begin and end sooner. “When the stream has no water because of the lack of precipitation, the stillness is eerie,” he says. 
 
 Krause's spot in the Mayacamas Mountains. Photo: Bernie Krause 
 
 To the eye, the Sugarloaf site looks pretty much the same as ever, save for the parched creek hidden away in the shrubs. That’s why the soundscape is so important. In Krause’s words: “It tells the story more eloquently, from a different perspective.” 
 
 Since 1994, Krause has visited this site each spring to record the dawn chorus of birds, always using the same gear and techniques, and always at the same times of day. His career of listening has led him on dozens of expeditions to remote, wild locales—Borneo, the Arctic, the Dzanga-Sangha rainforest in Africa—but throughout these travels Sugarloaf Ridge State Park has served as a kind of acoustic anchor. It’s his home terrain, only 20 minutes by car from his house, a convenient place to slip away and lose himself in the layering of chirps and burbles. With the failing rains, though, the music he’s come to cherish has mostly disappeared. 
 
 Sadly, disappearance is nothing new. Krause's audio archive, built over four decades, consists of more than 5,000 hours of what he calls "whole-habitat” field recordings from around the world. More than half of the habitats represented—from desert buttes to tidal pools to alpine meadows—are either totally silent or have been reduced over the course of his recording sessions due to impacts from logging, mining, real estate development, poaching, airplane traffic, warfare, and climate change. And, of course, climate change’s little sibling: drought. 
 
 “Because the changes take place from year to year, over a long stretch of time, I really wasn’t aware of what was happening,” Krause says of his Sugarloaf site. “It was only when I set up the examples side by side that the changes became apparent. The impact of the drought was both astonishing and alarming.” 
 
 With his colleague Almo Farina, a professor at Italy's University of Urbino, Krause is currently working on an academic paper that will turn his Sugarloaf recordings into crunchable numbers. Already, some preliminary results are emerging. The avian density (total numbers of individual birds) and avian diversity (total number of species) has declined dramatically since the early 2000s. Where there had been Brewer’s sparrows, acorn and pileated woodpeckers, black-headed grosbeaks, red-shouldered hawks, wild turkeys, and a handful of other species, now only a few California towhees, dark-eyed juncos, and white-breasted nuthatches can be heard. (Why those species have weathered the drought when others haven’t isn’t exactly clear—Krause’s paper could answer that question.) Between 2004 and 2015, the site’s biophony (totality of sounds produced by living organisms) dropped in level by a factor of five. “It’s a true narrative, a story telling us that something is desperately wrong,” Krause says. 
 
 The California drought gets a lot of press these days, as does ecological collapse in general, and the grim news can sometimes have a numbing effect on people who might otherwise be genuinely concerned. Perhaps that’s the special value of Krause’s work—not what it tells us of the changing ecosystem, but how it tells us, how it speaks directly to our feelings, the part of each human that can be moved by a Mozart concerto or a Led Zeppelin riff, the part that exists before and beneath the intellect, that can be filled to the brim. 
 
 Krause frequently refers to our planet’s diverse, evolved biophonies as “the voice of the divine.” The spring of 2015, by comparison, was muted, hollow, sad, and Sugarloaf Ridge a weak mimic of its lusher self, he says. “Whether or not the habitat will regain its biophonic vitality with the expected coming precipitation this winter remains to be seen,” he says. 
 
 After an hour of dawn recording, the sun begins its daily climb and Krause packs up his gear. In the space where there was once a chorus of intricate textures and complex rhythms, now there is a question: What will next spring sound like? He heads down the trail. For the time being, the recording session is over. ||||| There are lots of ways to monitor natural environments. You can count animals, track temperature, measure ice thickness, use time-lapse photography. A surprisingly powerful and direct method is to listen — to record the sounds of a habitat and observe how they change over time. 
 
 The work of taking and analyzing these recordings occurs in an area of study known as ecoacoustics. It’s a unique kind of discipline, with elements of both art and science, and it’s this combination that drew Bernie Krause to the work nearly 50 years ago. In the late 1960s, he was a professional musician working on an album called “In a Wild Sanctuary” that combined natural soundscapes with instrumentation. In the process of recording those soundscapes, Krause realized he was in the wrong line of work. 
 
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 “They were the most beautiful sounds I’d ever heard,” Krause says. “No music could compare, and I decided right then and there that [recording soundscapes] was what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.” 
 
 Soundscapes are the acoustic equivalent of a landscape image, explains Gianni Pavan, who studies bioacoustics at the University of Pavia in Italy, in an e-mail. They can include biological sounds (everything from birds chirping to carpenter ants rubbing their legs on their abdomens) non-biological natural sounds (distant thunder, trickling streams), and manmade sounds, like snowmobiles whipping through Yellowstone. 
 
 Over the years Krause has recorded more than 5,000 hours of audio, which is collected, in a sense, in a new book, “Voices of the Wild,” that can be read in coordination with a website where the audio clips are stored. The book features recordings from all over the world, from coral reefs off Fiji to the desert in New Mexico. Krause explains he finds soundscapes from Alaska to be particularly magical “because they’re so fragile and because they’re so expressive and wonderful at their peak.” He doesn’t have any from New England, however, because he says in such a densely populated area it’s hard to find places where natural sounds aren’t unduly affected by human activity, like planes flying overheard or lobster boats idling offshore. 
 
 Krause’s soundscapes are interesting and often beautiful. They also come with a political message. He estimates that nearly half of the habitats he’s recorded have either “gone silent” over the last 35 years or been radically altered by human activity. 
 
 To make this point, he sent me an audio clip that compares recordings taken at Sugarloaf State Park in California in 2004, 2009, 2014, and 2015. There’s an unnerving finality to the way the sounds peter out as time goes on, an effect Krause attributes to the region’s prolonged drought. 
 
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 Despite this gloomy trend, Krause remains celebratory in the way he approaches his work. Last year he debuted a symphony based on natural soundscapes and this past June a ballet for which he wrote the score premiered at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in Becket, Mass. With these projects and his book, he hopes to bring home just what we stand to lose as the environment around us recedes and changes. 
 
 “While I’m not terribly optimistic,” he says, “I am hopeful that we’ll begin to hear the message these critters are putting out in time to do something about saving them.” ||||| 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 Image 1 of / 12 Caption Close Image 2 of 12 Researchers say "the [destructive] changes in bird habitats and behavior between now and 2070 will equal the evolutionary and adaptive shifts that normally occur over tens of thousands of years." Yay humans! less Researchers say "the [destructive] changes in bird habitats and behavior between now and 2070 will equal the evolutionary and adaptive shifts that normally occur over tens of thousands of years." Yay ... more Image 3 of 12 Almost gone: The tricolored blackbird, once numbering in the millions, down to a fraction of that in CA. Almost gone: The tricolored blackbird, once numbering in the millions, down to a fraction of that in CA. Image 4 of 12 Bernie Krause, bioacoustician, because that's just a very cool thing to call yourself Bernie Krause, bioacoustician, because that's just a very cool thing to call yourself Image 5 of 12 Image 6 of 12 It's only because of conservation efforts and former Endangered Species Act protections that the gray wolf – and its howl – is still around at all. It's only because of conservation efforts and former Endangered Species Act protections that the gray wolf – and its howl – is still around at all. Image 7 of 12 It's beautiful, it's tranquil, but you really should hear a deep symphony of lush sounds. And it's getting weirdly quiet It's beautiful, it's tranquil, but you really should hear a deep symphony of lush sounds. And it's getting weirdly quiet Image 8 of 12 The sound of no water. The sound of no water. Image 9 of 12 A common finch, now less and less common. Do you notice less chirping in the trees around your house overall, over the years? Nature not as vibrant as it once was? Sort of like boiling the frog - it happens slowly, and it's not immediately evident until it's too late less A common finch, now less and less common. Do you notice less chirping in the trees around your house overall, over the years? Nature not as vibrant as it once was? Sort of like boiling the frog - it happens ... more Image 10 of 12 Image 11 of 12 Krause, back in 2007, with his equipment Krause, back in 2007, with his equipment Image 12 of 12 The silence of the birds: When nature gets quiet, be very afraid 1 / 12 Back to Gallery 
 
 Brutal wildfire images too much to bear? Fatigued by non-stop news of extreme weather, record-low snowpack , emaciated polar bears , unprecedented this and fast-receding that, a natural world that appears to be going more or less insane? 
 
 Maybe you need some quiet. Get outside, sit yourself down and let nature’s innate healing powers soothe your aching heart. 
 
 Sounds good, right? Sounds refreshing. Sounds… well, not quite right at all. Not anymore. 
 
 Have you heard? Or more accurately, not heard? Vicious fires and vanishing ice floes aside, there’s yet another ominous sign that all is not well with the natural world: it’s getting quiet out there. Too quiet. 
 
 Behold, this bit over in Outside magazine, profiling the sweet, touching life and times of 77-year-old bioacoustician and soundscape artist Bernie Kraus, author of “The Great Animal Orchestra” (2012), TED talker, ballet scorer, and a “pioneer in the field of soundscape ecology.” 
 
 Krause, last written about on SFGate back in 2007, is a man whose passion and profession has been making field recordings of the world’s “biophony” for going on 45 years, setting up his sensitive equipment in roughly the same places around the world to record nature’s (normally) stunningly diverse aural symphony – all the birds, bees, beavers, wolves, babbling streams, fluttering wings, the brush of trees and the rush of rivers – truly, the very pulse and thrum of life itself. 
 
 One of his most favorite spots to record? Sugarloaf Ridge State Park, in the Mayacamas Mountains, in Sonoma. It’s here he discovered something very disquieting indeed: The wonderfully diverse sounds of nature are no longer changing and evolving as usual. They are actually diminishing. Thinning out. And in many cases, vanishing completely. 
 
 This is the chilling news: Bit by bit, bird by bird, species by species, gurgling brook by gushing river, the song of wild nature is, in many places, falling deathly silent. The reasons? You already know: Real estate development, mining, logging, habitat destruction, climate change, drought. 
 
 Between 2004 and 2015, the [Mayacamas] site’s biophony (totality of sounds produced by living organisms) dropped in level by a factor of five. “It’s a true narrative, a story telling us that something is desperately wrong,” Krause says. 
 
 In short: What once was a rich, varied symphony of sound has become a far more subdued chamber orchestra, with large spaces of eerie silence where there was once a vast natural racket, signifying everything. 
 
 It’s not just Sonoma. The weird hush is surely spreading, becoming more and more familiar all over the world. It’s not hard to figure out why: We’ve successfully wiped out fully half the world’s wildlife, in the just last four decades alone. Songbird populations in particular, for a variety of (mostly terrible, mostly human-caused) reasons, have been decimated all over the world. The skies just aren’t as musical as they used to be. Ecosystems are sputtering, shifting violently, dying away completely, as pathways to life are being choked off. 
 
 I recently wrote about the week I spent at my family’s getaway cabin in northern Idaho (“Everything is on fire and no one cares“), a normally pristine, sublime summertime experience, this year ominously altered by the sheer density and persistence of smoke from all the regional wildfires. 
 
 The light was different, the air charred and dry. But perhaps most disquieting of all, was the sound – or rather, the lack of it. 
 
 When the wind died down and the smoke really gathered in, the sky would turn a more sickly yellow. The birds seemed to stop singing entirely. The bees fell silent. The normally vibrant background cacophony of the natural world flattened out. It wasn’t just eerie, it was psychically disturbing. You could feel the lack of healthy sound vibration in the air. 
 
 Of course it’s not that way everywhere. Wildlife still teems and flourishes in many parts of the world where humankind’s reach hasn’t penetrated as fully; in some places, due to the self-same climate change, there is bizarre excess, abnormal surges in animal population, even as overall biodiversity continues to decline. There is perhaps too much sound in some areas, as nature’s recoil to our abuses takes different forms – hurricanes, thunder, earthquakes. 
 
 But overall, the tonal shift is undeniable, and deeply unsettling: There is now less birdsong than at any time in human history. Fewer lions’ roars, beehive hums, elephant rumbles, frog croakings, simply because we’ve killed off so many of them, and show no signs of slowing. One by one and species by category, the orchestra’s players are exiting the stage. The concert will never be over, but at this rate, it might be a very bleak final movement indeed.
– It's easy to look around the West and see startling signs of the region's drought. Trickier, but perhaps just as startling, is to hear signs of that same drought. Researcher Bernie Krause has made it possible thanks to decades of recordings at California's Sugarloaf Ridge State Park, reports Outside Online. He goes there every spring to the same spot with equipment he's used as a leader in the field of "soundscape ecology," or "ecoacoustics," which the Boston Globe describes as a blend of art and science. Over the years, a creek that runs through the park has dried up, and the sounds of wildlife—or "biophony"—have dried up along with it. By Krause's measurements, the biophony is down fivefold since 2004. He is now working with a researcher at the University of Urbino in Italy to translate his recordings into hard data for scientists. “It’s a true narrative, a story telling us that something is desperately wrong,” Krause tells Outside. Krause himself says he didn't realize the extent of the decline until playing recordings from previous years side by side with more modern ones. At the San Francisco Chronicle, Mark Morford finds Krause's work "chilling," summing up thusly: "What once was a rich, varied symphony of sound has become a far more subdued chamber orchestra, with large spaces of eerie silence where there was once a vast natural racket, signifying everything." The 77-year-old Krause tells the Globe that he's not "terribly optimistic" about change, but “I am hopeful that we’ll begin to hear the message these critters are putting out in time to do something about saving them.” (Scientists now say California's snowpack is at a 500-year low.)