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Blue Carbon: field recording and soundscape composition in threatened coastal ecosystems across Southeast Queensland and Central America
Conference paper   Open access   Peer reviewed

Blue Carbon: field recording and soundscape composition in threatened coastal ecosystems across Southeast Queensland and Central America

Leah Barclay
The Global Composition 2026: Proceedings
The Global Composition: International Conference on Sound, Media and the Environment, 2026 (Darmstadt, Germany, 03-Sep-2026–06-Sep-2026)
Global Composition Conference
2026
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Blue Carbon: field recording and soundscape composition in threatened coastal ecosystems across Southeast Queensland and Central America160.53 kBDownloadView
Published Version Open Access CC BY V3.0

Abstract

Digital and electronic media art Music technology and recording Ecology not elsewhere classified Conservation and biodiversity Expanding knowledge in creative arts and writing studies acoustic ecology ecoacoustics bioacoustics design Blue Carbon K'gari Panama Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
Blue carbon, the carbon captured and stored by coastal and marine ecosystems including mangroves, seagrass meadows, and tidal wetlands, is sequestered at rates far exceeding terrestrial forests, yet these are among the most critically threatened ecosystems on the planet. When they are degraded, the carbon they hold is released, accelerating climate change and silencing the acoustic ecologies that sustain the biodiversity within them. Blue Carbon is a multi-channel soundscape composition that takes its title, and its ecological frame, from this concept. Drawing on field recordings from coral reefs, coastal wetlands, freshwater systems, and tidal zones across Australia and Central America, the work weaves field recordings from coastal reefs and wetlands to reveal the sonic interdependence of ecosystems often studied in isolation. Source recordings span K’gari (Butchulla Country, Australia), the Sunshine Coast UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, and marine environments of Southeast Queensland, alongside tropical ecosystems (including seagrass meadows and coral reefs) recorded during a Queensland–Smithsonian Fellowship at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama in 2026. The composition immerses listeners in these ecosystems while grappling with the degradation and anthropogenic impacts affecting environments that often act as nurseries for marine life. Blue Carbon positions listening as both aesthetic experience and act of care, inviting audiences into relational encounter with ecosystems they may never physically access, and proposing that the value of ecological sound art lies not only in what it reveals about changing environments, but in its capacity to deepen connection, improve wellbeing, and inspire responsibility toward the more-than-human worlds that urgently require new approaches to conservation.

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