Scientists invite the public to see — and hear — the upcoming eclipse

This coming Monday, April 8, 2024, hundreds of thousands of people in North America are planning to witness the total eclipse that will take place over a large swath of the continent. As people take out their protective glasses to watch the phenomenon, scientists affiliated with Medford, Mass.-based Eclipse Soundscapes hope people will also pay very close attention to the sounds of wildlife they hear around them.

The Eclipse Soundscapes project is gearing up to analyze how animals respond during an eclipse, including whether a darkening of the sky will result in changes in animals’ behavior. But to do this successfully, project organizers are relying on hundreds of people to make and record observations about how wildlife behavior changes during the eclipse.

“Inviting the general public to help collect data allows us to reach a diverse collection of geographic areas, communities, and ecosystems that we would not otherwise be able to study,” Kelsey Perrett, Eclipse Soundscapes communications coordinator, told the Civic Science Times. “Asking the public to participate in scientific exploration helps us affirm that science can be done by anybody, anywhere. And we hope collecting scientific data during the eclipse leads to a richer, more engaging eclipse experience for our participants.”

What’s particularly attractive about the April 8 eclipse is that it’s a total solar eclipse in North America, meaning that the Moon will pass between the Sun and Earth, completely blocking the face of the Sun and darkening the sky as a result, according to a NASA webpage about the April 2024 eclipse. Some areas of North America will have the Moon totally blocking the face of the Sun, while other areas will witness a partial blocking.

“During a solar eclipse, the sky transitions between light and dark and back to light again very quickly, almost like a rapid day-night cycle. We know that many species change their acoustic behavior between the day and night, but whether this is driven by changes in light or other factors is not always clear,” Dr. Will Oestreich, a postdoctoral fellow at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, said in a release. His research has involved looking at how animal behavior changes in dynamic ecosystems through listening to the sounds that animals produce.

“Because lightness and darkness become uncoupled from day and night during a solar eclipse, these events provide a natural experiment to explore the cues underlying animals’ acoustic behaviors and changes in the broader acoustic environment or soundscape,” Oestreich said.

Public citizens can get involved in the Eclipse Soundscapes project in several ways: they may sign up to be an apprentice, an observer or a data collector. Apprentices take online lessons to learn about eclipses, observers fill out and submit a form detailing their observations of April 8 and data collectors will utilize an audio device to record soundscapes.

After the eclipse, the public can still get involved by becoming a data analyst who will help analyze the recordings and uncover patterns in the recordings. Recordings will also be open sourced so that future scientific research can use the data.

Finding volunteers for the April 8 eclipse

To help prepare for the April 8 project, researchers asked the general public to collect data during the October 2023 partial eclipse. Approximately 492 Eclipse Soundscapes apprentices, 216 observers and 122 data collectors participated, according to Perrett.

“The 2023 annular eclipse allowed us to beta test our project,” Perrett said.

As of March 5, over 2,000 people have signed up to participate to make observations on and leading up to April 8, including 674 observers, 947 data collectors and 657 apprentices.

“Eclipse Soundscapes participants are located in various places across the entire path of the eclipse observing or collecting audio data. This allows us to capture much more data than we would be able to capture alone,” said MaryKay Severino, educational director and ARISA Lab co-founder. “Each one of these observations or soundscape audio recordings is a unique snapshot of a particular area. The more audio data and observations we have, the better we can answer questions about how specific ecosystems respond to the eclipse.”

In addition to the general public, Eclipse Soundscapes also sought volunteers from the U.S. Park Service since park rangers and related staff have unique access to a variety of ecosystems.

“We are putting an emphasis on collecting data in meadows and other places where these insects may be found” because crickets are a great example of wildlife that might respond to an eclipse, Oestreich said. “But participants will be collecting data across the whole diversity of ecosystems that are covered by the path of totality. Some ecosystems may have soundscapes that are influenced by human activity while other ecosystems might be influenced by different types of wildlife, so there are likely to be some surprises.”

The Eclipse Soundscapes project found inspiration from a similar civic science conducted nearly 90 years ago, according to Perrett. Researchers involved in a study conducted by William M. Wheeler asked the general public to observe how animals and insects reacted during an Aug. 31, 1932 eclipse. Researchers were able to collect 498 observations from the general public, and they released the Wheeler Study released its results in 1935.

Organizers say Eclipse Soundscapes will serve as a model for a multi-sensory approach to science observation and data collection, in which the public will observe what happens during the eclipse using their senses of sight, sound and touch.

“Years ago, a friend told me that during a total solar eclipse, crickets began chirping. There are actually multiple anecdotal reports of this happening,” said Dr. Henry “Trae” Winter, chief scientist for the project and co-founder of the ARISA Lab, a Medford, Mass.-based lab that seeks to develop educational technology solutions and resources for commercial, educational, nonprofit and government agencies.

“It occurred to me that eclipses could be studied through sound and other senses. We have traditionally thought of solar eclipses as visual events, but by opening it up to our other senses it becomes a much richer and more accessible experience,” Winter said.

Eclipse Soundscapes received funding through the NASA Science Mission Directorate Science Activation program, which also funds other ongoing civic science initiatives.

Joanna Marsh

Joanna Marsh is a freelance writer and journalist based in Washington, D.C. As a business journalist, she's covered transportation and logistics, the North American freight railroads, and sustainability and civic science initiatives.

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