I’m a huge fan of the park service and visit them quite frequently. This summer I’m headed to Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota and Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. My idea of camping is with a full service hotel and restaurant but I do like it when there’s no TV and no cell phone reception, which was the case on my visit to Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado. Check out these pictures of ancient Pueblo Indian dwellings from yours truly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This year the National Park Service is celebrating its 100 anniversary in August and there have been lots of stories on the news providing coverage on the celebratory activities throughout the country. A few weeks ago, NPR did a segment on how sound engineers are going deep into the parks to record the natural soundscapes of streams, waterfalls, animals and all parts of nature that make our parks so spectacular. I was thinking about all those kids that grow up wanting to be a park ranger, then get into a band in high school carting around their own A/V equipment. Then through a turn of events, they end up in the A/V industry. Well guess what? Apparently you can do both!

One thing that was particularly interesting are the studies they are doing on how humans and our sound pollution affect the animals. The bio acoustical scientist in the interview, Kurt Fristrup, explained that just a few changes in decibels can have a great effect on their ability to hunt.

“Imagine you’re an owl looking for your dinner,” Fristrup said. “A three decibel increase in sound level cuts in half the area in which you could hear those sounds,” he said. “So you are half as efficient in finding food, with a relatively subtle increase in background sound level.”

Click Here to read the entire interview or download the segment.