A brief overview of current approaches for underwater sound analysis and reporting

Geel, Nienke C. F. van; Risch, Denise; Wittich, Anja

doi:10.1016/j.marpolbul.2022.113610

Cited by 13 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 79 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The recordings were divided into two frequency bands (low: 0.1 kHz-2 kHz; high: 2-22 kHz) based on the flat frequency response band of the acoustic recorder used and preliminary examinations of the recordings for the existence of distinct sound sources in different frequencies. This partitioning allowed separate analyses of largely independent sound sources, similar to methods used in other studies (e.g., Archer et al, 2018;Bertucci et al, 2020;van Geel et al, 2022;Halliday et al, 2020;Lillis et al, 2014a;Monczak et al, 2019;Ricci et al, 2016). One mean SPL measurement was calculated for each sampling deployment and location by arithmetically averaging the unlogged SPL within the low and high frequency bands and across the three one-minute segments, then converting back to a logarithmic scale (dB; van Geel et al, 2022).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This partitioning allowed separate analyses of largely independent sound sources, similar to methods used in other studies (e.g., Archer et al, 2018; Bertucci et al, 2020; van Geel et al, 2022; Halliday et al, 2020; Lillis et al, 2014a; Monczak et al, 2019; Ricci et al, 2016). One mean SPL measurement was calculated for each sampling deployment and location by arithmetically averaging the unlogged SPL within the low and high frequency bands and across the three one‐minute segments, then converting back to a logarithmic scale (dB; van Geel et al, 2022). Season was defined as warm (i.e., summer; May through October) or cold (i.e., winter; November through April), based on previous definitions of annual seasons for the region (Moore et al, 2020), and was used to encompass multiple related environmental variables, like tidal height and temperature.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 95%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Intertidal Soundscapes of Hardened and Living Shorelines: A Case Study of Habitat Enhancement

Looby,

Reynolds,

McDonald

et al. 2024

Aquatic Conservation

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Organisms, such as fishes and invertebrates and including their larval stages, listen to underwater soundscapes to detect information about nearby habitats. Such soundscapes may be influenced by habitat degradation or enhancement, which can lead to acoustically mediated feedback loops affecting the overall ecosystem. Despite the importance of underwater sounds on ecological functioning, there have been limited studies documenting soundscapes of intertidal ecosystems and few, if any, of living shoreline soundscapes. Living shorelines would especially benefit from acoustically mediated effects for objectives like encouraging fish and invertebrate settlement. This case study used a Before‐After‐Control‐Impact design to sample soundscapes and nekton (i.e., fishes and mobile macroinvertebrates) at a living shoreline construction and a nearby hardened shoreline in Cedar Key, FL (USA). Diel soundscape patterns and acoustic attenuation at the two sites were also described a year following the living shoreline construction. In the acoustic sampling, the high frequency bands of both shorelines were dominated by invertebrate sounds that were influenced by season, site and time of day, while the low frequency band of the living shoreline was often dominated by a loud anthropogenic sound. About a year after the living shoreline installation—despite similar measured acoustic attenuation at both sites—the living shoreline featured louder sound pressure levels compared to the hardened shoreline, which may be particularly beneficial for promoting foundational species and other organism settlement. These results demonstrate that Gulf of Mexico intertidal habitats may have soundscape differences even within close proximity and that living shorelines may enhance acoustic characteristics in ways beneficial to continued shoreline development. This represents an important step in better understanding the relationships between habitat structures, nekton communities, and their associated soundscapes as well as the application of passive acoustic monitoring to improve coastal management and conservation.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 95%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Intertidal Soundscapes of Hardened and Living Shorelines: A Case Study of Habitat Enhancement

Looby,

Reynolds,

McDonald

et al. 2024

Aquatic Conservation

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Shipping activity is concentrated along commercial shipping lanes, while rain occurs in transient bands. Heightened awareness of the importance of the ocean soundscape has led to increased acoustic monitoring [55] and the generation and validation of ‘soundmaps’ [34, 56]. These maps require significant computational over-head and, consequently, we utilise the data from these previously-published studies rather than explicitly modelling spatial noise distributions.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Avoidance, confusion or solitude? Modelling how noise pollution affects whale migration

Johnston,

Painter

2023

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Many baleen whales are renowned for their acoustic communication. Under pristine conditions, this communication can plausibly occur across hundreds of kilometres. Frequent vocalisations may allow a dispersed migrating group to maintain contact, and therefore benefit from improved navigation via the “wis-dom of the crowd.” Human activities have considerably inflated ocean noise levels. Here we develop a data-driven mathematical model to investigate how ambient noise levels may inhibit whale migration. Mathematical models allow us to simul-taneously simulate collective whale migration behaviour, auditory cue detection, and noise propagation. Rising ambient noise levels are hypothesised to influence navigation through three mechanisms: (i) diminished communication space; (ii) reduced ability to hear external sound cues and; (iii) triggering noise avoidance behaviour. Comparing pristine and current soundscapes, we observe navigation impairment that ranges from mild (increased journey time) to extreme (failed navigation). Notably, the three mechanisms induce qualitatively different impacts on migration behaviour. We demonstrate the model’s potential predictive power, exploring the extent to which migration may be altered under future shipping and construction scenarios.

show abstract

“…The broad field of environmental sound analysis has been termed ‘ecoacoustics’ (Sueur and Farina 2015; Farina and Gage 2017). The physical environment can clearly be said to involve ‘soundscapes’ (Haver et al, 2019) as well as landscapes, and anthropogenic sound sources, such as those produced by the engines of vessels (Wilson et al, 2022; Van Geel et al, 2022), vehicles, wind turbines, and many others, may interfere with the study of the natural sound environment or with organisms. This has long been a concern in the marine environment (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Acoustic methods in physical geography: Applications and future development

Dunkerley

2022

Progress in Physical Geography: Earth and Environment

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Sound is produced by many geomorphic and hydrological processes, such as rockfalls and landslides, ocean waves, fluvial flood flows and collisions among moving bedload clasts. In these and other areas of study, acoustic methods have found useful application to detect and quantify the operation of important landscape processes. In some, such as the recording of river discharge, the occurrence of rare events such as exfoliation or the presence and movement of dust devils (willy-willies), the use of acoustic methods is still in a relatively early stage of development and testing. The use of acoustic methods in the recording of rainfall occurrence and intensity is also developing and has the capacity to yield data with higher temporal resolution than can be achieved using conventional rain gauges. Novel acoustic methods include the analysis of the sound recorded by security cameras, which potentially form a vast network of observing stations. The frequencies of sound generated by land-surface processes include audible sound, ultrasound and infrasound at frequencies below the human hearing range. All appear to provide opportunities for further development of useful research tools and methodologies.

show abstract

A brief overview of current approaches for underwater sound analysis and reporting

Cited by 13 publications

References 79 publications

Intertidal Soundscapes of Hardened and Living Shorelines: A Case Study of Habitat Enhancement

Intertidal Soundscapes of Hardened and Living Shorelines: A Case Study of Habitat Enhancement

Avoidance, confusion or solitude? Modelling how noise pollution affects whale migration

Acoustic methods in physical geography: Applications and future development

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About