Title:

Subterranean Bioacoustic Sensing:A Novel Approach for Soil Monitoring and Pest Detection

As subterranean organisms move through the soil, they emit sounds which can be transduced and analyzed to produce data on how they interact with their environment. A new sensor that is (a) highly sensitive, (b) easily deployable, (c) self-contained, and (d) cost-effective is needed by researchers. Previous efforts made by UNH students Jeremiah Audette and Andrew Peloquin using an array of buried MEMS microphones to collect audio data and locate its source using beamforming were promising but never completed due to aboveground interference and inadequate microphone sensitivity. To overcome these issues, a new sensor using contact microphones rather than MEMS microphones was made. The suitability of contact microphones was proven by researchers at the University of Warwick, who were able to record the sound of individual worms moving through soil. This new sensor, combined with Audette and Peloquin’s previous research on beamforming, possesses capabilities that no other subterranean acoustic device currently has. The sensor can inform researchers where signals originate from and allow them to be counted. This makes the sensor valuable for early pest detection, as a method of counting the number of organisms in a location as an indicator of soil health, and many other use cases.

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