Sara recently collaborated with ecologist Pablo López-Bustamante, Ph.D. candidate in VCU’s School of Life Sciences and Sustainability, on a few compositions exploring themes of biodiversity in the tropical dry forest.
Check out Pablo’s website and explore three contrasting compositions: The Forest Ensemble presents a musical ensemble as a metaphor for the individuals inhabiting a forest ecosystem; Competition vs. Facilitation explores the interactions between species; and The Forest Sonification translates three data sets into music, showing the relationship between hotter, drier weather and changes in tree abundance over time.
Special thanks to Alan Biller for contributing guitar and bass and Mennill Lab for the amazingly lush and beautiful field recording of the Costa Rican tropical dry forest. Plus, thanks to all of the support behind Pablo’s research, including Catherine Hulshof’s lab at VCU and the National Science Foundation.