From volcanoes and Swiftquakes to buzzing bees: How scientists use sound to understand our environment

Tiny Matters

At the end of 2016, a pilot reported that a volcano in Alaska called Bogoslof was erupting. Bogoslof had been quiet for 24 years, and there wasn’t any equipment on it that scientists could use to track its eruptions. But over the next 8 months, scientists were able to track at least 70 eruptions from Bogoslof, and they did so using something you might not expect: sound.
In this episode of Tiny Matters, we’ll cover what sound can tell us about events as big as volcanoes and ‘Swiftquakes’ and as small as the insect world, where researchers are using AI to track different insect species, leading to important discoveries that could help not just public health but agriculture and climate policy.
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1. From volcanoes and Swiftquakes to buzzing bees: How scientists use sound to understand our environment (00:00:00)

2. Bogoslof is erupting — but how do we know without equipment? (00:00:02)

3. How do we study volcanoes? (00:02:06)

4. The SOFAR channel (00:04:54)

5. A volcano! (sped up) (00:06:46)

6. A Swiftquake (00:09:00)

7. The smaller side of sound: insects (00:13:12)

8. Using AI and machine learning to track insects (00:20:14)

9. Tiny Show and Tell: T-rex intelligence and volcanoes on Venus (00:25:09)