Crunching worms, squeaking voles, drumming ants: how scientists are learning to eavesdrop on the sounds of soil

Fascinating read, thanks so much for sharing it! I think this is probably one of the most unexplored areas of bioacoustics. It seems like there is so much potential for agricultural applications with this.

Similarly to what is described in this article, coral reef health is also being monitored based on acoustics. It is sometimes even taken a step further in that speakers are being used to play the sounds of healthy coral reefs in order to attract fish and coral larvae to struggling reefs. I wonder if this is something that is also being explored with soil.

So many of the chemicals and pesticides that are used in agriculture are applied in places that the insects they are designed to defend against are not even there, simply because they don't know exactly where the pests are. Acoustic monitoring could potentially reduce the amount they use by a massive amount. On top of this, however, audio could possibly be played that dettered certain pests from going certain places, or audio that encourages them to go places other than to crops, we could potentially see pesticides being replaced by a combination of real-time monitoring and sound generation.