The Sundarbans – meaning “beautiful forest” in the local Bengali dialect - is the largest mangrove forest in the world, and it is under threat from development.

Stretching along the coastline of India and Bangladesh, this complex maze of mangrove trees and waterways mark the area where land meets the sea and freshwater meets seawater.

Wildllife thrive in this unique and delicately balanced ecosystem and it is home to large numbers of mammals, birds and fish. It is also one of the largest haunts of the endangered Royal Bengal tiger.

But the Sundarbans value extends beyond just providing a habitat for these magnificent animals; it also protects the densely populated Bay of Bengal from cyclones and the worst extremes of nature.

Yet, it is now, in 2013, threatened by man’s activities, including land reclamation, logging and shrimp farming. In fact, this vast tract of mud and tangles of roots is now being destroyed faster than almost any other ecosystem on Earth, removing this essential barrier and the rich habitat.

A landscape may look healthy, but how

does it sound, and what does that say about how its wildlife is doing?

It's a question Bernie Krause has spent much of his life trying to answer. To

do so, he's recorded the sounds of thousands of places in far-flung corners of

the world.

He coined the word "biophany" to describe these recordings. These soundscapes

have helped him show what happens to animals in stressful environments, and

explain where our language comes from.

It wasn't what he originally planned to do.

Bernie Krause started as a classic musician. He joined the US folk group The

Weavers in 1963, but became famous for introducing some of the biggest bands in

the world to the synthesiser in the mid-1960s.

George Harrison, Simon & Garfunkel and The Doors all learned from Krause

and his partner Paul Beaver.

Beaver and Krause composed and played the Moog synthesiser with the Monkees

and provided soundtracks for big Hollywood blockbusters. They're credited with

introducing the synthesiser to pop music and film.

But it was a chance encounter while recording an album that put Krause's life

on to a different track.

"We were doing an album for Warner Brothers called 'In a Wild Sanctuary'

which was the first album ever to use ecology as its theme, and the first ever

to use natural soundscapes as a component of orchestration," he said.