Sonorous Landscapes aims to address the challenge of engaging urban communities, urban design professionals, and policy makers in proactive biodiversity conservation within the context of urban woodlands and coppicing paddocks. Through Slough Borough Council's (SBC) Digital Urban Forest
(DUF), the project will design and test the efficacy of innovative time-based methods for i) capturing changing levels of biodiversity through sound and ii) communicating these changes through creative digital methods that engage audiences with sensing and data. The research will encourage active community stewardship of SBC’s green transition initiatives—specifically, the
DUF's reforestation and rewilding activities. It will test the efficacy of its methods in changing perceptions of biodiversity and creating tangible evidence to support urban design and policy interventions that improve biodiversity. It will support climate and environmental education initiatives that raise awareness of the importance of biodiversity in urban settings, spanning subjects from arts and humanities to design, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). By designing exemplary means of engaging stakeholders in measures and discourse regarding biodiversity, the research aims to increase stewardship of urban ecologies and embrace the societal changes that are urgently needed to address the climate crisis.
The research will develop and pilot innovative unattended field-based recording methods, analysis, and creative time-based visualizations. It will build upon four sensor and creative communication projects previously delivered by Senior Research Associate Rupert Griffiths and funded by the Joy Welch Post-doctoral Fund, AHRC Impact Acceleration Account, Universität Bonn TRA Sustainable Futures fund,and the Urban Tree Challenge Fund (DEFRA). These projects have laid a solid foundation for the proposed project, developing and testing the underlying infrastructure, technologies, and engagement techniques.