In daily life, sound
is an important yet often overlooked factor. While humans receive constant
auditory input, most of this information goes unnoticed unless it becomes
a nuisance or ceases suddenly. Unconsciously, however, sound has a dramatic
impact on an individual’s emotional state and decision making. In
addition to its psychological effects, we maintain that sound functions
in ecology in a dual role as both an indicator of ecosystem activity,
particularly when related to human disturbance, and a stressor on ecosystem
function and services. In the Muskegon River Watershed, we have been gathering
data from permanent recording sites, aquatic sampling activities, manual
field recordings, and volunteer recordings and interpreting this data
within the general framework of the Soundscape concept.
The goal of this research is to
gather, interpret, analyze, and ultimately quantify acoustic information
from the environment. This quantification will then be correlated to
landscape analysis, remote sensing data, and land use/land cover data
to develop an index of disturbance regimes for land use changes and
land development.
Simultaneously, by making
this information consistently available to the public in real time through
the Clickable Ecosystem concept, we hope to aid in policy decisions,
general understanding of ecological systems, and public education, thereby
helping to develop a society that is better informed and more capable
of making intelligent ecological decisions.
