Friday, May 28, 2010

Back to the wind...


I wonder if anyone has ever made recordings of the sound the wind makes as it blows through different trees. Like those people who study noise, or create sound effects. This could be somewhat useful to a few people; like landscape architects. A recording could let your client hear what it would sound like if they plant one type of tree over another. I was on the mountain bike up in the canyons and on the hillsides of the CHWP this afternoon and stopped by this little grouping of pines and noticed the gentle sighing sound that the wind made. Anyone who has gone camping is probably familiar, and how that gentle sighing can increase to a deep roar when the wind speed increases. At another spot I stopped beside a Sambucus (Elderberry) which made a kind of rustling sound; and a little further along, in a grove of Eucalyptus it seemed like much the same sound, but maybe a little less deep. In the depths of the Cobal Canyon oak grove, there was no sound because there was no wind. I imagine the differences can be attributed to leaf shape, size, the density of the canopy, etc., and I was really only able to notice these differences by riding away from the urban area and its myriad of competing sounds.  That said, i'm sure you can notice differences in the city, but the urban forest is usually so diverse, that it would be more difficult to separate the sounds that individual trees make.

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