{"id":28753,"date":"2026-06-10T16:13:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T20:13:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/news\/?post_type=story&p=28753"},"modified":"2026-06-10T16:13:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T20:13:12","slug":"clark-senior-interns-for-massachusetts-department-of-environmental-protection-researches-soundscapes-in-cranberry-bogs","status":"publish","type":"story","link":"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/news\/2026\/06\/10\/clark-senior-interns-for-massachusetts-department-of-environmental-protection-researches-soundscapes-in-cranberry-bogs\/","title":{"rendered":"Clark senior interns for Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, researches soundscapes in cranberry bogs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

Leo Kerz \u201926 collects 63,000 nature recordings to track ecosystem health<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Erica Cai and Leo Kertz used sounds in their honors thesis, assessing soundscape differences across sites and how the landscape context affects the sounds within the wetlands. Photo courtesy of Florencia Sangermano.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Leo Kerz \u201926 has always loved nature. It\u2019s in his genes. His grandfather served for decades on the Water District Board in Rocky Hill, Connecticut, and Kerz grew up watching his mother serve on Rocky Hill\u2019s Wetlands Review Board.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI would join her on public review visits, and there\u2019d be a scientist with us talking about the boundaries of the wetlands, the trees, the frogs, the plants,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This past semester, Kerz interned for the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection<\/a>, which monitors air and water quality, recycling and waste management, septic systems, wetlands and waterways protection, and contaminated-site cleanup. He was excited to apply for a position whose positive impact is tangible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs a kid, I would walk to this river behind my house and think, \u2018Who is responsible for this?\u2019 There was a landscaping company next to it that would dump waste in the river,\u201d he recalls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The geography<\/a> major was tasked with building a database for the Watershed Planning Program that houses information about Massachusetts lakes and ponds, including depth, surface area, slope, nutrient characteristics, and chlorophyll levels. A typical day for Kerz involved coding and streamlining important data points for MassDEP watershed workers in the field. When Kerz wasn\u2019t doing internship work, he was fine-tuning his thesis, titled \u201cAcoustic Monitoring in Restored Cranberry Bogs: Soundscape Relationships to Restoration Age and Landscape Context in Plymouth, Massachusetts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kerz placed audio recording devices on trees in restored cranberry bogs to gather sounds of nature, such as birds, frogs, and insects, as well as human activity such as traffic. The devices netted 63,000 one-minute recordings. He presented his research at this spring\u2019s ClarkFEST<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt would be impossible to listen to them all,\u201d he says, \u201cso we used [programming languages] Python and R to do the automated data processing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n