Biological Sound Sources Drive Soundscape Characteristics of Two Australian Marine Parks

Abstract

Soundscapes represent an intrinsic aspect of a habitat which, particularly in protected areas, should be monitored and managed to mitigate human impacts. Soundscape ecology characterizes acoustic interactions within an environment, integrating biological, anthropogenic, climatological, and geological sound sources. Monitoring soundscapes in marine protected areas is particularly important due to the reliance of many marine species on sound for biological functions, including communication and reproduction. In this study we establish a baseline understanding of underwater soundscapes within two marine National Park Zones (NPZs) along the east coast of Australia: Cod Grounds Marine Park and an NPZ surrounding Pimpernel Rock within Solitary Islands Marine Park. In each of the NPZs, underwater recorders were deployed twice during the austral winter (33–35 days, 2018 and 60–69 days, 2019) and once during the austral summer (35–71 days, 2018–2019). We used the resulting acoustic recordings to determine hourly presence of anthropogenic and biological sounds between 20 Hz and 24 kHz and analyze their contributions to patterns of received sound levels. Sounds from vessels were recorded on most days throughout monitoring but were not found to influence long-term patterns of sound levels over their corresponding frequencies. Biological sources included dolphins, snapping shrimp, fish choruses, humpback whales, and dwarf minke whales. Dolphins, snapping shrimp, and fish choruses were present in all deployments. Median ambient sound levels showed a consistent diel pattern with increased levels resulting from crepuscular fish choruses combined with a higher intensity of snapping shrimp snaps during those times. Singing humpback whales strongly influenced the overall sound levels throughout the winter migration, while dwarf minke whales were consistently detected in the 2019 winter deployment but were only present in 2 h among the earlier deployments. Patterns of acoustic spectra were similar between the two NPZs, and patterns of soundscape measurements were observed to be driven by seasonal differences in biological contributions rather than anthropogenic sound sources, indicating that these NPZs are not yet heavily impacted by anthropogenic noise. These baseline measurements will prove invaluable in long-term monitoring of the biological health of NPZs.

A Study on the Soundscape Preferences of the Elderly in the Urban Forest Parks of Underdeveloped Cities in China

“…The third section pertained to the question of landscape issues, specifically, the kind of water body that was preferred, the kind of tree environment that was preferred, whether pure green or color accents were preferred, and what kind of sky was preferred, as well as the visitors' understanding of noise, i.e., whether noise had an impact on their experience, whether they had complaints about noise, how to deal with noise pollution, how to reduce noise, and how to hear the location of the noise [53].…”

Open‐source workflow approaches to passive acoustic monitoring of bats

“…The affordability, capacity and endurance of modern recorders have substantiated their use as a non‐invasive method for passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) of vocalizing animals in the wild, including echolocating toothed whales and bats that actively sample their surroundings with high‐amplitude ultrasound (McCordic et al, 2021; Sugai et al, 2020). However, with the upscaling of high‐capacity recorders into multiple‐device networks follows a need for efficient data processing and interpretation.…”