{"id":11050,"date":"2015-03-19T14:44:07","date_gmt":"2015-03-19T19:44:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/?p=11050"},"modified":"2015-03-19T14:50:14","modified_gmt":"2015-03-19T19:50:14","slug":"sound-of-science-depaul-organization-turns-ear-to-city-noise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/sound-of-science-depaul-organization-turns-ear-to-city-noise\/","title":{"rendered":"Sound of science: DePaul phonographers tune in to city noise"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Bryce Gray<\/p>\n

With car horns, truck traffic, and the buzz of jackhammers and construction blaring through every city neighborhood, local decibel levels make Chicago one of the noisiest<\/a> places in the country.<\/p>\n

That’s\u00a0according to data released recently by the National Park Service\u2019s Division of Natural Sounds and Night Skies.<\/p>\n

Amid the din, Chicago Wildsounds<\/a> \u2013 an organization of phonographers launched by DePaul University students \u2013 has spent the last year and a half\u00a0studying the area\u2019s natural sounds through localized projects devoted to the emerging field of soundscape ecology.<\/p>\n

Birds breaking out in song are a sure clue to soil rich with earthworms, for instance. And crickets change the frequency of their chirps to compete with traffic noise,<\/p>\n

Roni Jachowski, a senior environmental studies major and a co-founder of Chicago Wildsounds, says a key goal of the group\u2019s research is \u201cto see if we can make predictions about the health of an ecosystem based on what we hear.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Members<\/a>
Chicago Wildsounds, shown here with DePaul environmental sciences professor Liam Heneghan, top left, have been recording the city’s soundscape. Group co-founder Roni Jachowski\u00a0 listens to the world front and center. (Photo courtesy of Chicago Wildsounds.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the fall, the group put that notion to the test by conducting traditional ecological assessments of soil quality and seeing whether their findings corresponded with sounds above ground.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were able to come up with some interesting results,\u201d Jachowski said.<\/p>\n

The group found that in areas with greater quantities of earthworms present \u2013 a possible indicator of good soil health \u2013 there were also more bird calls.\u00a0 Audio recordings also indicated that fewer birds correlate with higher levels of ammonia in the soil and sparser populations of worms.<\/p>\n

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Another of the group\u2019s main research projects monitors the urban soundscape on a north-south gradient stretching along the lakeshore, from McDonald Woods near the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe to Burnham Wildlife Corridor on the South Side. Jachowski said that the long-term lakefront sound collection is ongoing and findings have yet to be analyzed.<\/p>\n

Recordings captured in such an intensely urbanized environment obviously reveal more than simply the sound of the natural world \u2013 known as biophony to sound ecologists. Plenty of human-produced sounds \u2013 or anthrophony \u2013 are picked up along with the natural hum of the wind or thunderstorms, characterized as geophony.<\/p>\n

[soundcloud url=”https:\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/170249433″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” \/]<\/p>\n

Jachowski said that she has been unable to find any location in the Chicago area where the surrounding anthrophony is completely stifled.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason is because of Midway and O\u2019Hare,\u201d said Jachowski. \u201cWe have a lot of air noise pollution. That\u2019s what we call a sonic signature and that is Chicago\u2019s sonic signature. It will include airplanes \u2013 it just will.\u201d<\/p>\n

The students involved with Chicago Wildsounds still have yet to fully analyze their recordings. But other sound ecology researchers have drawn surprising conclusions about the influence of human noise on the natural world.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are studies that have shown that crickets are starting to communicate in a different frequency range \u2013 in a higher frequency range,\u201d said Jachowski. \u201cAnd they believe that\u2019s because traffic occupies a low frequency and so crickets are having to operate on a different frequency.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bird species, too, have had to alter their vocalizations in order to be heard. For instance, \u201cwe know that American robins are communicating louder because of a lot of the anthrophonies \u2013 the human-made noises,\u201d said Jachowski, noting that researchers are investigating how noisier environments are impacting reproduction in various species by drowning out mating calls. \u201cDefinitely more and more things are starting to come out about how noise is negatively affecting wildlife,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

The effects of noise pollution are not confined to terrestrial ecosystems. In fact, \u201csounds underwater travel five times farther and it\u2019s a noisy environment,\u201d said Dr. Bryan Pijanowski, a renowned sound ecologist<\/a> at Purdue University and the featured guest speaker at a Chicago Wildsounds event last Thursday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe should be a bit concerned about that because we have a lot of organisms that have to communicate long distances and that\u2019s how they\u2019ve evolved,\u201d Pijanowski said. \u201cWhales, in particular, sing their songs and try to find a mate from long distances away. And if we\u2019re making sounds that hinder that ability<\/a>, it\u2019s not a good thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though troubled by the mounting evidence of human-caused noise disturbances in nature, Pijanowski is encouraged by the groundswell of interest in natural sound demonstrated by groups such as Chicago Wildsounds and in the general public.<\/p>\n

\u201cSounds kind of have this special meaning for all of us,\u201d Pijanowski said. \u201cI think for a while there we turned off our ears, and now we\u2019re seeing this resurgence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Photo at top: Chicago Wildsounds members check\u00a0equipment monitoring natural and urban sounds. (Chicago Wildsounds\/Courtesy)<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bryce Gray With car horns, truck traffic, and the buzz of jackhammers and construction blaring through every city neighborhood, local decibel levels make Chicago one of the noisiest places in the country. That’s\u00a0according to data released recently by the National Park Service\u2019s Division of Natural Sounds and Night Skies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":11084,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general-interest"],"yoast_head":"\nSound of science: DePaul phonographers tune in to city noise - Medill Reports Chicago<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/sound-of-science-depaul-organization-turns-ear-to-city-noise\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Sound of science: DePaul phonographers tune in to city noise - Medill Reports Chicago\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Bryce Gray With car horns, truck traffic, and the buzz of jackhammers and construction blaring through every city neighborhood, local decibel levels make Chicago one of the noisiest places in the country. 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