Acoustic Footprint of Snowmobile Noise and Natural Quiet Refugia in an Alaskan Wilderness

Mullet, Timothy C.; Morton, John M.; Gage, Stuart H.; Huettmann, Falk

doi:10.3375/043.037.0308

Cited by 16 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…Forman (2000) suggested that the effect distance is around 300 m for woodlands experiencing road traffic volumes similar to our busiest road (Samford) and therefore at least at this site, some effect of traffic noise may have permeated to the other treatments. These results support findings of previous research indicating that technophony can extend into natural areas and has a much larger acoustic footprint than the disturbance at the immediate site of activity (Barber et al 2011;Mullet et al 2017). It is also possible that bird species with low frequency calls (<2 kHz) may have contributed to the technophony index, as peaks in technophony at these times also correlate with high levels of bird activity at dawn and dusk.…”

Section: Temporal Patternssupporting

confidence: 89%

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Traffic noise impacts on urban forest soundscapes in south‐eastern Australia

2017

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While the negative impacts of road infrastructure on faunal diversity and abundance have been extensively studied, many traffic noise studies have been conducted in the presence of confounding factors. Therefore, the extent to which traffic noise alone is responsible for impacts is not well known and a better understanding is required to inform urban planning and management decisions. We examined the impact of traffic noise on soundscape patterns at road edges in urban forests. Acoustic sensors were deployed at road and powerline edges, as well as within interior habitat, at three sites in south-east Queensland, Australia. Powerline edges were included to separate edge effects from traffic noise impacts. We used soundscape power (normalized watts per kHz) of technophony (traffic noise in the 1-2 kHz range) and biophony (animal sounds in the 3-11 kHz range) to investigate soundscape patterns. The results showed that biophony was consistently lower at road edges and was negatively correlated with traffic noise and positively correlated with distance to road edge. Technophony was higher at road edges and was found to correlate negatively with distance to road edge and positively with traffic noise. Technophony and biophony at powerline edges generally exhibited values comparable to interior habitat. These results indicate that traffic noise affects urban forest soundscape patterns at road edges in southeastern Australia.

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Section: Temporal Patternssupporting

confidence: 89%

“…; Mullet et al . ). It is also possible that bird species with low frequency calls (<2 kHz) may have contributed to the technophony index, as peaks in technophony at these times also correlate with high levels of bird activity at dawn and dusk.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Traffic noise impacts on urban forest soundscapes in south‐eastern Australia

2017

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“…While a variety of acoustic metrics and indices are available (BradferLawrence et al, 2019), the intention of this study was to utilize the figurative "lens" of soundscape power (Kasten et al, 2012) and NDSI (Gage and Axel, 2014) to describe the current state of the Aialik Bay coastal wilderness. Soundscape power has been successfully used to describe soundscapes in southcentral Alaska (Mullet et al, 2016(Mullet et al, , 2017a and coastal soundscapes in the Pacific Northwest (Ritts et al, 2016). Although NDSI has not yet been applied to subarctic ecosystems, NDSI is based on the metric of soundscape power (normalized watts/kHz) so it was expected that NDSI could be a useful descriptor as it has been in other studies (Gage and Axel, 2014; Fuller et al, 2015; Eldridge et al, 2016; Schindler et al, 2020.…”

Section: Acoustic Measuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Sound is an inherent component of Wilderness (Mullet et al, 2017a), playing an important role in ecological processes (Farina and Gage, 2017) and influencing the emotional states of human beings (Moscoso et al, 2018) and their perceptions of environmental quality (Carles et al, 1999; Traux, 2001; Romero et al, 2015. However, soundscapes as a whole and their components of biophony, geophony, and technophony are not simply an attribute of Wilderness but also indicators of Wilderness quality (Mullet et al, 2017a). Where natural activities of soniferous species and geophysical events dominate the landscape, biophony and geophony are evident, signifying an intact Wilderness characterized by naturalness.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Few peerreviewed ecoacoustic studies have focused specifically on terrestrial subarctic regions of Alaska (Mullet et al, 2016(Mullet et al, , 2017a or Alaskan Wilderness in particular (Miller et al, 2018; Mullet et al, 2017a. The NPS Natural Sounds Program has established baseline sound pressure levels at a variety of national parks, including Alaska (Lynch et al, 2011), and have explored a variety of ecoacousticrelated topics with reports, articles, teaching materials, and sound galleries available at https://www.nps.gov/subjects/sound/references.htm.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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An Ecoacoustic Snapshot of a Subarctic Coastal Wilderness: Aialik Bay, Alaska 2019

Mullet¹

2020

JEA

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I recorded the ambient sounds at three locations in the wilderness of Aialik Bay in Kenai Fjords National Park, Alaska between 25 June and 21 September 2019. My aim was to capture an ecoacoustic snapshot of the coastal soundscape to provide a comparable baseline for evaluating wilderness characteristics defined by the Wilderness Act of 1964. I visually and empirically characterized the Aialik Bay wilderness soundscape using the acoustic metrics of soundscape power (normalized watts/kHz) and Normalized Difference Soundscape Index (NDSI) from 5373 five-minute recordings, combined with visual and aural spectral examination of 4386 recordings. Soundscape power exhibited similar patterns across frequency intervals with sound sources primarily occurring in the low-frequency (1–2 kHz) and mid-frequency (2–5 kHz) intervals. Significant differences within frequency intervals between sites suggested the presence of distinct sonotopes. Low-frequency sounds were dominant across all three sites with peak soundscape power values across study days and 24 h timeframes attributed to wind and occasional periods of technophony emitted from commercial tour boats and private boating activities. Low-frequency geophony from wave action was ever present. Technophony exhibited some predictable patterns consistent with the timing of sightseeing boat tours. Peak values of soundscape power at mid-frequencies were attributed to the geophony of rain. Although biophonies were less common than geophonies, the choruses of songbirds were prevalent in July and promptly occurred daily between 0300 and 0600. Biophonies generally declined over the course of the day. All sites displayed negative NDSI values over most study days and consistently negative values over 24 h time frames, indicating a soundscape primarily influenced by low-frequency geophony and periods of technophony. However, NDSI values showed patterns and peaks similar to biophonies at mid-frequency intervals indicating biophony was still a notable contribution to this geophony-dominant soundscape. Despite the acoustic footprint of motorboat noise detected at all sample sites, the soundscape of the Aialik Bay wilderness was dominated by the natural sounds of geophony, biophony, and occasional periods of natural quiet indicative of a wilderness only partially impacted by technophony.

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Connecting Soundscapes to Landscapes: Modeling the Spatial Distribution of Sound

Mullet

2017

Ecoacoustics

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Acoustic Footprint of Snowmobile Noise and Natural Quiet Refugia in an Alaskan Wilderness

Cited by 16 publications

References 49 publications

Traffic noise impacts on urban forest soundscapes in south‐eastern Australia

Traffic noise impacts on urban forest soundscapes in south‐eastern Australia

An Ecoacoustic Snapshot of a Subarctic Coastal Wilderness: Aialik Bay, Alaska 2019

Connecting Soundscapes to Landscapes: Modeling the Spatial Distribution of Sound

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