The Brief

Think back to the last concert you went to. Now replace the music that rang through the venue with an erratic series of pops, muffled staccatos, distorted taps, and sudden clicks. Not one sound is quite distinguishable from the other, all blending together in a medley of unsynchronized noise.

Except, instead of musicians, what you’re hearing is a mass of underground invertebrates. And they’re putting on an unorthodox show for the handful of humans who know where, and how, to tune in — a complex symphony of vibrations and pulses that relay the state of the very soils these organisms are moving within.

Although the practice of recording the sounds of nature has existed for over a century, using those recordings to analyze ecosystem health is a newer discipline. Scientists have, in recent years, started experimenting with using ecoacoustic tools to capture the full range of sounds in healthy ecosystems — such as in coral reefs, caves, and oyster beds — and applying those recordings to restoration efforts in damaged and degraded areas.

And yet, soils, and the many hidden species and organisms that subsist underground, haven’t been considered for such techniques. Until now.

People in the past have thought ecoacoustics probably can’t be used for that, because there’s no vocalization or echolocation. We’ve shown that it actually can be used,” said Robinson. The trick, he noted, is deploying sensitive-enough microphones that allow you to detect the most minuscule of movements. “Things like millipedes, the little tappy legs, you can compare that to a worm, [which has] more of a slidey action. So actually, you can tell slight differences between the acoustic profiles of these little critters.”

From millipedes to nematodes, soils across the world teem with billions of living organisms that make up Earth’s biosphere and contribute to the global food supply. All told, the ground beneath our feet houses the most biodiverse habitat on the planet. “The more invertebrates that are in the soil, the more active that they are, the more different sounds and vibrations they are emitting,” said Robinson.

His team used a belowground sampling device and sound chamber to record and collect 240 soil acoustic samples from deforested plots, locations undergoing restoration, and those with at least some of their original vegetation in a corridor of grassy woodlands in Mount Bold, South Australia. After listening to the acoustic recordings first onsite, and then removing soil samples to analyze them in controlled conditions in the field, they discovered a pattern: The acoustic complexity and diversity of the soundscapes were significantly lower in the deforested plots.

From millipedes to nematodes, soils across the world teem with billions of living organisms that make up Earth’s biosphere and contribute to the global food supply.

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JAY DIRECTO

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AFP via Getty Images

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Lack of diversity in a soundscape indicates that life belowground is missing, so the soils are likely to be in a state of degradation, meaning they are experiencing physical, biological, and chemical losses in quality. Degradation causes significant biodiversity decline, hampering soil’s vital ecosystem services, such as water cycling, and results in colossal consequences for the world’s agricultural productivity, curbing crop yields and livelihoods. It is a problem impacting more than three-quarters of land on Earth. “That could rise to 90 percent by 2050 unless we intervene,” said Robinson, echoing a warning issued by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in 2022. “We need to do something.”

Unsustainable land management, intensive farming practices, urbanization, and anthropogenic climate change can disturb and damage soil, triggering degradation — which, in turn, affects how much carbon soils have the capacity to store.

Degradation also creates a negative feedback loop for many soil species, reducing their chances of survival, and further deteriorating the soil. That’s because these soil organisms are themselves key to preserving soil health, so their presence is not only an indicator of soil viability, but also helps create that viability. Earthworms in particular augment global food production, contributing to the growth of more than 140 million metric tons of food every year by increasing plant growth and enriching soils. (If earthworms were a country, they would be the fourth-largest grain producer.)

In fact, in many parts of the world, counting earthworms is commonly deployed by farmers to measure soil health, but those measurements aren’t always accurate. “Everything has its place in ecosystem ecology. So if you’re only measuring one thing, you miss other parts,” said Victoria Burton, a postdoctoral researcher who studies soil biodiversity at the British Natural History Museum. One example is that in areas where earthworms are invasive, you’re likely to find plenty of the invertebrates in degraded habitats, which by that nature would make counting their abundance a poor benchmark for healthy land. This bolsters the case for widely applying soil acoustics for more accurate readings in agricultural and conservation contexts, she said.

French farmer Nicolas Denieul shows earthworms in a field in Piace, northwestern France.

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Jean-Francois Monier

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AFP via Getty Images

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Burton added that this research is the first of its kind to show how ecoacoustics can be used to identify soil health specific to the grassy woodland ecosystem — a study released last year, also helmed by Robinson, found similar results when measuring soil biodiversity in Britain’s temperate forests — but she has questions regarding how this technique would perform in other ecosystems. She’s exhilarated by the prospect, however: Her team is installing soil acoustic sensors in the museum’s gardens to better monitor changes to urban wildlife in the space.

Scientists aren’t only listening to underground realms for classification purposes. They’re also using acoustics to see if they can speed up the restoration process, according to Robinson. “The vision, I think, is to see if degraded soils can be played sounds that help them recover,” he said.

In another forthcoming study, his team discovered that, when they played certain sounds to a type of fungus called Trichoderma, widely used in agriculture to protect crops against diseases and improve plant health and revegetation, it effectively stimulated organism growth. Of course, this result is preliminary, but offers up major implications for how ecoacoustics could be applied to deteriorated soils on farmland. Monitoring soil health by way of soundscapes could be used by farmers and growers to figure out where they need to preemptively intervene. And playing back healthy soil recordings in eroded swaths of land could, in theory, encourage that beneficial fungi growth, jump-starting restoration.

As with any body of research in its infancy, just how this technology will be applied, and what degree of impact the use of ecoacoustics could wield in efforts to restore deteriorating soils, remains up in the air. The biggest uncertainties revolve around how different soil types and properties may affect sound transmission belowground, in addition to how this technique might perform in other ecosystems and geographies.

While researchers work to figure out those missing pieces, the natural symphonies found within soil are beginning to attract attention from unlikely sources. Last year, a composer in Norway reached out to Robinson with an unusual request: She wanted to incorporate sounds emitted by earthworms into one of her orchestral productions.

“It’s quite interesting to hear a millipede, who’s got tiny legs. It’s like a little hairy, high-frequency tapping sound. Then, for instance, a snail, which is like a slow, slimy, glide-y sound, and the worm is something in between,” said Robinson. “That’s like listening to Mother Earth, isn’t it?”

Lines stretched around the block Sunday at the Original Saugus Cafe in Santa Clarita. It was supposed to be the restaurant's last day before closing after 139 years — making it the oldest continually operated restaurant in Los Angeles County.

But earlier this week, a sign was posted on the door saying, "Reopening under new ownership soon," although there were few details about who would be running it.

The sign was a surprise to the Mercado family, who have operated the restaurant for nearly 30 years. The family now is in a legal dispute with the Arklin family, who owns the property, about the potential re-opening and who owns the historic name.

The background

Alfredo Mercado worked his way up from bartender to restaurateur, purchasing the business in 1998. Since then Mercado and his daughters have operated the restaurant, leasing from the Arklin family. For most of that time, according to the Mercado side, the two families maintained good terms. Property owner Hank Arklin Sr., a former state assemblyman who owned other properties in the area, kept a verbal month-to-month agreement with the Mercados — no written lease required.

That changed when Arklin died in August at age 97.

New terms, failed negotiations

Larry Goodman, who manages multiple properties for the Arklin family's company, North Valley Construction, took over the landlord relationship. In September, the Mercado family say they were presented with a new written month-to-month lease.

Yecenia Ponce, Alfredo's daughter, said the new terms included various changes to the existing agreement, including a rent increase and charges for equipment.

Months of back and forth negotiations about different options, including selling the business, ultimately fell apart. Their attorney, Steffanie Stelnick, says they are being forced out, without proper legal notice, and has sent a cease-and-desist letter to Goodman saying the family has plans to continue running the business.

LAist reached out to Goodman for comment repeatedly Wednesday and Thursday by phone but did not hear back.

Goodman told The Signal, a Santa Clarita valley news outlet, that Alfredo Mercado had changed his mind several times in recent weeks about keeping the business.

“I said, ‘Fine,’ then I got out and got someone to take it over,” Goodman said.

He said he'd been in contact with Eduardo Reyna, the CEO of Dario's, a local Santa Clarita restaurant, and that the cafe could re-open as soon as Jan. 16.

Who owns what?

The dispute also focuses on who owns the rights to the Original Saugus Cafe name.

Ponce said when her father purchased the restaurant in 1998, it was called The Olde Saugus Cafe, but the name was then changed to The Original Saugus Cafe. State records show that name registered as an LLC under Alfredo Mercado.

After Arklin’s death, however, the Arklin family filed a pending trademark application to lay its own claim to the name.

The Mercado family is resisting.

"As long as they don't buy the name from us, we're not handing it over," Ponce said.

Ponce said the family had no idea the landlord planned to continue operations.

"We truly did think we were closing," she said. "We were not aware that they had plans to continue."

She apologized to customers for the confusion.

Whether the decades-old restaurant name survives — and under whose control — may ultimately be decided in court.

Community leaders and politicians in Los Angeles are responding in outrage after an ICE agent shot and killed a woman in Minnesota on Wednesday.

The fatal ICE shooting of 37-year-old Renee Good has sparked anger and fear in Los Angeles, which has been an epicenter of federal immigration enforcement since the summer.

Jorge-Mario Cabrera with the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, or CHIRLA, says the killing was upsetting but not surprising.

" Los Angeles has been witness of the escalating aggressiveness of these federal agents against the community," he told LAist.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has defended the shooting, saying Good was trying to run agents over with her car. That account has been disputed by eyewitnesses, the mayor of Minneapolis and other officials. Bystander video also challenges the federal narrative, according to MPR News.

L.A. politicians have joined a chorus demanding justice for Good. Mayor Karen Bass posted on X, saying that ICE agents are waging "a purposeful campaign of fear and intimidation" on American cities.

"The senseless killing of an innocent and unarmed wife and mother by ICE agents today in Minneapolis is shocking and tragic and should never have occurred," she said in the post.

L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn called on Noem to withdraw ICE from U.S. cities.

“These ICE agents are undertrained and trigger happy and everyone who has seen this video knows ICE murdered this woman,” she said in a statement.

Some protesters also gathered outside the federal building in downtown L.A. Thursday morning to condemn the killing.