You Can Hear When Trees Are Thirsty
Drought Bidgee/WikipediaScientists identify a specific acoustic signature that drought-stressed trees make. Imagine you're just polishing off a glass of soda. Whatever liquid left in the straw makes that gurgling sound indicative that there's just nothing left in the glass to drink. Turns out, trees under drought stress make the same sad sound, and a few researchers hope they can use that acoustic signature to identify and save otherwise-doomed trees. That trees make noise (beyond the delicate rustle of leaves in the wind) is no secret. But teasing out the specific physical phenomena that cause the various arboreal noises has eluded researchers. At the recent meeting of the American Physical Society, scientists from Grenoble University in France presented research that not only were they able to determine that drought-stressed trees make noise, they were also able to show exactly which process created the sound. To really grok the research, it's helpful to...