“I remember having a conversation with a French artist in Berlin who was working on a sound installation to investigate the sounds of soil,” said Lehmann, professor of soil and crop sciences in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS). “She asked, ‘Is soil really silent? Or are there sounds? Surely there are animals making sounds. Has anyone listened to the soil?’”
Back in Ithaca, he met with researcher Holger Klinck, director of the bioacoustics lab at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. “I presented this kind of provocative thought here and invited people from across the university,” Lehmann said. “I’ve been a soil scientist for 30 years, and I’ve never thought about what sounds the soil makes. It’s the greatest biodiversity on Earth, and it’s something we wanted to follow up on.”
Lehmann and Klinck sounded out two other Cornell scientists – associate professor of entomology Kyle Wickings and assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering Greg McLaskey – to join in a project to listen to the Earth. Wickings is the principal investigator on “Sounds of Soil,” a project to develop inexpensive acoustic sensors to detect, monitor and study populations of soil-dwelling organisms – in particular, disruptive insects that feed on roots, affecting both plant and soil health. The project received a Venture Fund grant from the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability in June 2018.
The artist Lehmann met in Berlin, Karine Bonneval, is on campus for a residency with Lehmann until Nov. 17 and will discuss her work in a public lecture Oct. 28 at 5:15 p.m. in Milstein Auditorium. She will have an art exhibition Nov. 10-16 in the Experimental Gallery in Olive Tjaden Hall, with an outdoor art installation on the Ag Quad that she is building with students Kimberly Garcia ’22; Shiyi Li, M.P.A.’15, M.S. ’18; and KAR Robison ’20.
Bonneval has worked with scientists since 2014 to develop collaborative projects focused on trees and plants and their environments, combining research and creation. In her public lecture, she will discuss projects including “Listen to the Earth,” with Lehmann and biologist Matthias Rillig from Berlin, based on recent research on linkages between sound, soil, plant root behavior and fungi.