British Sign Language Glossaries of Curriculum Terms

BSL Environmental Science Glossary - Sonograms definition

Definition: Sonograms can be used to assess how many dolphins are in a certain area of the sea, if they are abundant or declining. Sonar devices emit sonar, acoustic beams scanning the sea and picking up the reflected sounds of dolphins which is then converted into a picture on a screen. The frequencies can show where the dolphins are in an area and how many there are. If there is a lot of sonar reflected back on a part of a sonogram, that means there are a lot of dolphins in that area, and if there is not much sonar reflection in a particular area of the sonogram, that means there are not many dolphins in that area.

The same system can be used in forests to find out the number of bats in an area. As with underwater sonography, the increased sonar frequency reflected back in the sonogram corresponds to the number of bats, if there is a lot of sonar reflected back, then there are a lot of bats in that area.