The National Park Service has published a map of the sounds of the continental United States:
Why is the National Park Service concerned about noise?
Park visitors and wildlife interact with each other and park resources through their senses, including the sense of hearing. So, protection of natural sounds is good for both ecosystems and the quality of visitor experience. Additionally, there are laws and policies that require the agency to conserve acoustic environments “unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”
How does the sound map work?
Scientists made long term measurements of sound in parks as well as urban and rural areas across the country. This information helped predict current sound levels for the entire United States. A model was developed to understand relationships between measured sound levels and variables such as climate, topography, human activity, time of day, and day of year. The resulting geospatial sound model can also estimate how places would sound naturally, without human influence.
It’d be interesting to see a map of the United States without human influence, except that should really read “human technological influence,” since, after all, humans are part of Nature. Possibly a good rephrase would be “if humans had not overflowed their natural niche due to their tool-making capability, as well as their tendency to over-reproduce.”
Attempting to be precise renders the entire matter problematic – it forces you to think clearly about humanity’s role in Nature and betrays hidden biases. And leaves me with a stutter.
