Podcast Episode #25

Professor Rachel Buxton is  a conservation scientist at Carleton University aiming to support conservation policy and practice with robust evidence.

Dr. Rachel Buxton’s   main research interests include soundscapes, seabird ecology, ecological restoration, and systematic conservation planning.  

Dr. Rachel Buxton’s  research focuses on the impact of noise pollution and the benefits of natural sound, quantifying the relationship between sound and biodiversity patterns, and the importance of the acoustic environment for the health of wildlife and humans.  

Rachel  also examines information gaps to achieve biodiversity conservation targets in Canada. Rachel Buxton works with groups of practitioners, decision-makers, Indigenous peoples, and stakeholders to ensure her research is applicable for mobilizing effective conservation solutions. 

 In drawing from her experiences as a research scientist, mom, life-long learner, teacher, mentor, and community member, Rachel Buxton is committed to making a difference for biodiversity conservation and environmental justice.

Welcome Professor Rachel Buxton.

• Please tell us a little about you, how you got interested in conservation biology?

I grew up in Vancouver, British Columbia right next to the ocean. I spent a lot of time down at the beach sticking my nose in tide pools, so I really had an interest in the natural world from a young age.

Early in my college studies somebody took me out birding, looking for birds on the coast – and I have never been the same since. So I fell in love with birds. I followed them around the world. I’ve been lucky to have studied in a lot of amazing places, I have  been extremely  fortunate.

Some of my first  studies took place in some of the Aleutian Islands  in Alaska. It’s a chain of islands that run between Alaska and Russia. You have to fly 5 hours to get close, and then you have to take a boat for two days to get to the study site. You are in the  middle of the ocean. I was studying at the time these nocturnal seabirds. They spend the majority of their time out on the ocean, and they only come back to land at night under full darkness to breed – to find their mates, and to incubate their chicks.

There are six million birds on this island where I was. You turn your  headlamp off at night – it is deafening — the  sounds of these birds. I just  remember  getting goose  bumps. It was so haunting. It really raised my awareness of the importance of the acoustic environment….of  sounds. These birds use the sound of their mates to navigate  to their specific burrow out of 6 million burrows.

Not only  was it an incredibly beautiful experience, but it also awakened  my understanding of the importance of the sound environment.

And I hadn’t  even heard of conservation biology. That’s a field in biology right?

That’s right. So it’s my job as a conservation biologist and a scientist, to provide people with evidence and information about how we can better conserve the natural world. So whether that is studying birds and their distribution, what’s driving their population decline/population improvement, or more on the policy side…what policies work for protecting wildlife, which ones don’t, how can we make them better.

Your recent paper is a synthesis of the health benefits of natural sounds. Why are natural sounds important?

The impetus for the whole project was when I  did my previous post doc work at Colorado State University, and I was working for the national park service and they have an entire section  called the Natural Sounds and Night Skies Division. We were looking at the impact of noise pollution on wildlife in national parks – and also on the enjoyment of visitors who were visiting the natural places in the parks in the United States.

We started to get a pretty good idea of the negative implications of human caused sound on both wildlife and humans, but really what we found interesting is  — what is the opposite of that?  

So when you enter these quiet  spaces, what are the advantages of  hearing these natural sounds?

I think we can all attest to the beauty and the inspiration of hearing  a babbling brook or birds singing from the trees, but are there actual benefits to our health and well-being from experiencing those bursts of sound?

And this is really a growing  area of research as well  so in that paper  that you were just mentioning we just put all that research together. So we searched the literature for any study that looked at the health benefits of  natural sound and we put them all together to get the study results.

That is so important, you did a meta-analysis of 36 studies, and it is great, people are really interested in this.

Yes, I think it was really neat, because by doing a meta analysis – which is an anlaysis of all these peoples’ analysis – that we could put all these analyses together that come from different countries, with different types of natural sounds, and when we put them all together we could get an idea overall of what the health outcomes are of listening to natural sounds.

For me what was the most striking was the level of benefit that we get. So we found an overall an over 180% improvement in groups that listened to natural sounds – we also found large decreases in stress and annoyance in groups that were listening to natural sounds.

And then just the breath of different health outcomes, so everything from improving our mood, improving our cognitive abilities – so our ability to do complex tasks, decrease in our pain, and decrease in our levels of stress. So really a remarkable set of benefits just from listening to the  sounds  of nature.

You’ve talked about the benefits, what can you say about what sound does to our body?

Sound is such an important sense. It is one of the first senses that form in humans. Baby’s can hear from 20 weeks in the womb. It’s a very primal sense.

It is very under appreciated. There is no such thing as ear lids. We can’t close out ears, so we are constantly taking in information through our ears. Even when you are sleeping you are still hearing and you have reflective capacity for sound. It is such an important sense, and one that often gets ignored because are these visual creatures.

So when you go out into nature you think about these beautiful vistas that you see – looking over from a mountain top – yes that is very important, but the sounds that you are experiencing in nature are also really fundamental.

You can think of the impact  of sound from  an evolutionary perspective. So humans  are really good at  paying attention to signals of danger and signals of safety. A sound environment that is full  of sounds of nature, birds, water is a pretty good indicator of a safe environment. So what that allows us to do is let down our guard,  it allows for mental recuperation, and relaxation. Whereas an acoustic environment that is empty —  so either it has no natural sounds – the birds have stopped singing – or it has very few  natural sounds, that’s a  pretty good indicator that something has gone wrong. It might be an indicator of danger. And so what happens is we become vigilant. We are on the look out for what might be wrong. That does  not allow for mental recuperation and can actually lead to stress.

This audience is pretty good at knowing about the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems  and how nature moves us to the peaceful state because  that  is what I  write about in my book. You actually say that sound affect heart rate?

Absolutely, sound affects our fight or flight response, again because sound is such an important sense, it is very good  at triggering these automatic responses in the body.

So that sympathetic nervous system, think of your alarm clock  in  the  morning, that immediately triggers your sympathetic nervous  system – increases your heart rate, your breathing rate, changes your hormone levels, so sound has this really close connection  with our physiology. And hearing unpleasant sounds can really rapidly trigger our sympathetic  nervous system response,  whereas natural acoustic environments that are full of soothing sounds is a very good way of going back into homeostasis – so triggering that parasympathetic nervous system response.

Are there particular sounds that have greater impact than others or is it personal?

 Many sounds are personal, emotional, and are very good at triggering memories. However, one of the really neat results from our study was that different types of sounds tend to have different types of benefits.

We found that water sounds, like the sound of a river, waterfall, or rain tended to  have more impact on “positive affect outcomes.” These are things like our feelings of tranquility.

We also found that bird song had greater benefits for reducing stress and reducing annoyance. So the sounds of birds tend to make us feel relaxed.

I am out here in the boreal forest, but still I hear ATVs and traffic, am I still getting the benefits of my acoustic environment Rachel?

That is a great question and it is definitely at the front of my mind being in the middle of Ottawa. We have so much information that noise pollution is detrimental for so many aspects of our health. However, another interesting result from our study is that we found that groups that listened to natural sounds that were paired with human sounds like traffic sounds had greater health benefits that those that just listened to traffic sounds. So it does appear that natural sounds benefit us even over the din of human sounds. So that is great news for people who live in the city or even I guess in northern Manitoba.  

It is also very interesting news for urban planners who are considering using the sounds of natural features.

This is hopeful. Thank you Rachel. Would it work if you were on a road trip and you put natural sounds on? Or maybe that is not in any of your studies yet?

The studies that we looked at all used recordings. So most were done in a lab or a hospital settings. Patients were participants. They were played natural sounds through headphones. And they saw these improvements in health outcomes.

I always do like to mention though, that there are many other facets of your nature experience – the sights, the smells, the full experience is what gives us all the other health benefits. So your best bet is to always get outside, but for those of us who work in an   office or can’t get outside, certainly listening to recorded birdsong is a  good idea.

Finally Dr Rachel Buxton, what are your tips/advice do you have for our listeners when we go outside for 1) our health and 2) to help conserve for biodiversity?

I would say health wise, your best bet is to spend time outside. But for those of us who  live in cities and are exposed to noise pollution, I think just focused listening, and just training your ear when you get outside is important – so trying to really focus in on natural sounds …what birds am I hearing… is the water rushing, is the wind blowing the leaves in the trees, really trying to pay more attention.

When we tune our attention to natural sounds, we appreciate those sounds. You come to recognize how special and beautiful  those sounds are, and I think it motivates us to protect them. When we see how special they are, we see that they are really deserving of our attention and protection.

There are things that we can all do to protect the acoustic environment, birds are a large component of the acoustic environment. A paper just came out that we have  lost 3 billion birds since the 1970s. We are losing birds in huge numbers.

There are many strategies that we can do every day to protect birds.

Can you give us a few easy ways to protect birds?

Keep your cats inside. Put decals on your windows.

As far as your own impact on the acoustic environment, there are simple things you can do. Make  sure you are appreciating nature quietly. So maybe next time you go into the woods, try and keep your voice down.

Also maybe think about how you are getting to your natural sounds. As much as you can try to walk to places or take a shuttle – whatever alternative options you have to driving to reduce traffic noise that you produce.

Now my sister in Ottawa is going to ask  me, did you ask her where she goes birding?

She will probably beat me to the punch  here, and most birders in Ottawa can attest to Mud Lake. It is an important bird area in Ottawa – right on the Ottawa River – it is right on the lake and right on the river – it is stunning. During the Spring migration, it is dripping with migratory birds that have just come up from South America, Central America – it’s a magical place.

Thank you so much Dr Rachel Buxton for this clear and helpful information. I heard you on CBC Quirks and Quarks where you provided your information is an easy to understand way – only here today, we got much more of your time and advice.  Thank you again Dr. Rachel Buxton.

 Where can our readers find your work?

Website: https://rachelbuxton.wordpress.com

Twitter: buxton_rachel

Thank you to our podcast listeners in now 28 countries and 328 cities around the world. Thank you for listening to and sharing this podcast with others and thank you for your kind reviews on Apple podcasts. I would love hear your comments on this episode. For a complete transcript of this episode – just go to my website treesmendus.com. (all one word) Please check out my book and workbook Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Prevent Dementia, and Control Your Chronic Illness.

Listeners Next time you go outside remember that, as Professor Rachel Buxton’s research shows  natural sounds are important for your health and well-being.

Your natural soundscape (even with the sound of traffic in the background) is changing your heart rate – slowing it down… decreasing your pain, lowering your  stress, improving  your mood, and enhancing your cognitive performance…. and this is a good thing because we all need a little more of Your Outside Mindset.