Overview
- Sound artist Jeff Rice placed a hydrophone in a hollow branch and recorded deep, low‑frequency rumbling plus distant thumps that were not audible through the air.
- Advocates interpret the thumps as vibrations traveling through connected roots, a result that could show the colony acts as a single linked organism, but the transmission path is not yet proven.
- Hydrophones can pick up vibrations transmitted through solid surfaces as well as water, which motivated the experimental method but also creates a need for controlled setups to rule out soil or airborne pathways.
- Friends of Pando and collaborators plan follow‑up studies using acoustic data to try to map root architecture, track water movement, and monitor insects and overall ecosystem health as a non‑destructive tool.
- Pando is a roughly 100‑acre clonal aspen with about 47,000 stems that is showing signs of decline from human-driven pressures, making reliable, low‑impact monitoring methods a conservation priority.