Hearing the impact of climate change in Okinawa, one bird call at a time

In Ginowan, Okinawa Prefecture, there’s a field — now largely overgrown but once home to numerous farms — boxed in by highways, a major U.S. military base and various residential complexes. Amid the tall grass sits a high-end audio recording device with a small, almost cutesy rooftop placed above it.

The device, which is used to record the surrounding landscape, with a particular interest in birds, might seem like an unlikely candidate for something that could provide insights into climate change’s ecological impact — especially next to a steady stream of birds of a different sort: noisy helicopters and planes going to and from U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma.

But combined with devices at 22 other sites spread across Okinawa’s main island and backed by advancements in artificial intelligence, the recorder is giving scientists at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology the data they need to track how the species that call it home are being affected by climate change.

The progression, causes and effects of climate change have been measured by everything from multimillion-dollar satellites to the humble thermometer, but increasingly scientists are turning to sound to track warming’s troubling roles in the biodiversity crisis and collapse of ecosystems.

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