Jeffrey Nystuen: An innovator in the field of ocean ambient sound

It is a testament to Jeff Nystuen’s pioneering research that many of us now think about ocean ambient sound rather than ocean ambient noise. The term noise makes us think of this as a nuisance factor that needs to be overcome by a useful signal. However, Jeff changed this paradigm and showed how valuable environmental information can be extracted from the ambient sound field. Specifically, hedeveloped the acoustic rain gauge and expanded our understanding of the sound rain generates in the ocean. He spent many years bringing this idea from a concept to a mature device that could be practically used in the ocean to estimate rainfall and measure other important ambient sound events. Following Jeff’s early work, many other techniques that use ambient sound for environmental characterization have been developed. In this talk, we will pay tribute to Jeff’s groundbreaking research. We will also explore how this work has led to improved models for ambient sound as well as applications to environmental sensing.