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Detection and Classification of Motor Vehicle Noise in a Forested Landscape

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Abstract

Noise emanating from human activity has become a common addition to natural soundscapes and has the potential to harm wildlife and erode human enjoyment of nature. In particular, motor vehicles traveling along roads and trails produce high levels of both chronic and intermittent noise, eliciting varied responses from a wide range of animal species. Anthropogenic noise is especially conspicuous in natural areas where ambient background sound levels are low. In this article, we present an acoustic method to detect and analyze motor vehicle noise. Our approach uses inexpensive consumer products to record sound, sound analysis software to automatically detect sound events within continuous recordings and measure their acoustic properties, and statistical classification methods to categorize sound events. We describe an application of this approach to detect motor vehicle noise on paved, gravel, and natural-surface roads, and off-road vehicle trails in 36 sites distributed throughout a national forest in the Sierra Nevada, CA, USA. These low-cost, unobtrusive methods can be used by scientists and managers to detect anthropogenic noise events for many potential applications, including ecological research, transportation and recreation planning, and natural resource management.

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Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully thank the National Park Service Natural Sounds and Night Skies Division, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and J. Medley for providing valuable assistance with acoustic software and analyses. The authors also thank E. Cole and A. Lambert for their help in obtaining the special use permit to survey in Sierra NF; A. Kemsley, K. Lash, I. MacKay, L. Mangan, J. Tietz, and S. Yee for field assistance; and C. Krumm for her help with the organization and analysis of data. Funding to support this research was provided by grants and donations to the California/Nevada Regional office of The Wilderness Society.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology and Wildlife, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK, USA

    Casey L. Brown

  2. North America Program, Wildlife Conservation Society, Bozeman, MT, USA

    Sarah E. Reed

  3. Department of Fish, Wildlife & Conservation Biology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA

    Sarah E. Reed

  4. The Wilderness Society, 1615 M Street, NW, Washington, DC250 Montgomery St., Suite 210, San Francisco, CA, USA

    Matthew S. Dietz

  5. Natural Sounds and Night Skies Division, U.S. National Park Service, Fort Collins, CO, USA

    Kurt M. Fristrup

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  1. Casey L. Brown
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  2. Sarah E. Reed
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  3. Matthew S. Dietz
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  4. Kurt M. Fristrup
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Correspondence to Casey L. Brown.

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Brown, C.L., Reed, S.E., Dietz, M.S. et al. Detection and Classification of Motor Vehicle Noise in a Forested Landscape. Environmental Management 52, 1262–1270 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-013-0123-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-013-0123-8

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