About the speaker

Rachel Buxton is a research associate in conservation biology at Carleton University. She started her research career studying seabirds in the Aleutian Islands, Alaska. Having fallen in love with remote oceanic islands, Rachel then got her Ph.D. studying island restoration in New Zealand. Her research now centers on the ecology of sound – how we can use natural sounds, like bird song, to study biodiversity, how we can strengthen human connection with nature through natural sounds, and how human sounds affect wildlife. Having done fieldwork from Antarctica to Africa, Rachel is passionate about conserving the natural world. She works with policy-makers and conservation practitioners to ensure her research is applied to protecting biodiversity.

Listening in on Biodiversity: The Importance of Natural Soundscapes

Imagine yourself in your favorite park, looking out over an expansive wilderness. You close your eyes and take in the natural quiet – the wind rustling the leaves, the haunting call of a loon. We’ve only now started to understand the importance of these natural sounds and the collective ‘soundscape’ they create. For humans, natural soundscapes restore our senses: reducing stress, increasing our ability to concentrate, and improving mood. Most animals rely, at least in part, on sound to carry out essential activities such as finding and avoiding becoming food. Unfortunately, these natural sounds are increasingly under threat due to the intrusion of noise made by humans. Noise has consequences – masking natural sounds, altering wildlife behavior, physiology, and distribution and increasing stress and annoyance in humans. My research focuses on the science of sound in a landscape: examining the distribution and impact of noise pollution, monitoring biodiversity using acoustic recordings, and managing soundscapes to improve human and ecosystem health.

About Science Literacy Week

Science Literacy Week showcases the diversity of Canadian science and the culture it’s embedded in. Libraries, museums, science centres, schools and not-for-profits come together to highlight the books, movies, podcasts and events that convey the excitement and influence of science in our everyday lives. To learn more about Science Literacy Week, please visit www.scienceliteracy.ca