Birdsong As an Element of the Urban Sound Environment: A Case Study Concerning the Area of Warnemünde in Germany

Abstract

SummaryBirds are common species in urban ecosystems and birdsong is an important element of many urban sound environments. Perceptions of birdsong loudness, based on a case study in Warnemünde, a coastal area in Germany, were analysed in terms of its role in urban sound environment, the relationships with other sounds, spatiotemporal characteristics, as well as the relationships with underlying landscape characteristics. An important and positive role of birdsong in urban soundscape perception in the study area was recognised. The analysis of the relationships between birdsong perception and other sounds suggested that, although birds could adjust their songs with continual urban traffic sounds, they are still sensitive to excessive sounds related to human appearance (adult voice, child voice and footstep) or human activities (construction sounds, music). The spatiotemporal patterns of perceived loudness of birdsong suggested the adapted patterns of bird species in urban areas. Perceived loudness of birdsong showed close relationships with the underlying landscape characteristics indicated by a series of landscape spatial pattern indices. Positive relationships were found with construction density, road density, vegetation density, as well as fragmentation status indicated by patch density, largest patch index, landscape shape index, fractal dimension and contagion.

Ten questions on the soundscapes of the built environment

“…For instance, attempts have been made to map directly some soundscape dimensions (e.g. 'calmness', like in Figure 6), starting from individual data collected on site through soundwalks (e.g., Liu, Kang, Luo, Behm, & Coppack, 2013;Liu, Kang, & Behm, 2014;Aletta, Margaritis, Filipan, Puyana Romero, Axelsson, & Kang, 2015;Aiello, Schifanella, Quercia, & Aletta, 2016). The hypothesis for developing such maps is that based on the soundscape information on certain locations in an area, the soundscape of the whole area could be predicted with spatial interpolation analysis method in GIS platforms.…”

Reduce Subjective Annoyance from Transformer Noise by the Method of Sound Adjustment and Control

“…Soundscape studies [22,30] suggested that people usually favornature sounds such as water sound and birdsong. In this study,three kinds of water sounds (WS1, WS2 and WS3)w ere added to original noise samples separately.…”

“…Soundscape studies [31] suggested that ac omfortable acoustic environment largely depends on sound source type; some pleasant sounds, even though their SPLs are higher,may create more comfortable atmosphere. One of the common proposed solutions to improve the soundscape in urban spaces is to introduce natural sounds to mask urban noises such as road traffica nd construction noises [30]. Jeon et al [15] studied the soundscape of urban spaces and found that introducing water sound could improve the subjective perception of urban spaces soundscape.…”

Urban soundscape maps modelled with geo-referenced data

“…It is noteworthy that these birds are better perceived in the center of the garden than at its periphery [32]. The data layer "gardens" of the IGN's¹ BD TOPO French database was used.…”