Soundscape and Landscape Ecology - Soundscape Ecology: Principles, Patterns, Methods and Applications - page 1

Chapter 1
Soundscape and Landscape Ecology
The soundscape is defined as the entire sonic energy produced by a landscape and is
the result of the overlap of three distinct sonic sources: geophonies, biophonies, and
anthrophonies.
Geophonies are the result of sonic energy produced by nonbiological natural
agents such as winds, volcanoes, sea waves, running water, rain, thunderstorms,
lightning, avalanches, earthquakes, and flooding.
Biophonies are the results of animal vocalizations (song, contact and alarm calls,
voices).
Anthrophonies are the result of all the sounds produced by technical devices
(engines, blades, wheel revolutions, industries, etc.).
The spatial overlap of geophonic, biophonic, and anthrophonic patterns creates
the sonotopes. Each sonotope for the effect of behavioral constraints can be further
subdivided into soundtopes. In the zone of contact between different soundtopes, a
tension zone of acoustic uncertainty/overlap is called a sonotone.
The sonic environment, important for most organisms that perceive, in a species-
specific way, acoustic information coming from different components of the
ecosystems, represents a promising field of ecological research: “soundscape ecol-
ogy.” This new ecological discipline was presented to a landscape ecology congress
in 2009 with a symposium titled “Soundscape Ecology: Merging Bioacoustics and
Landscapes,” where a primary role was recognized for different components such
as acoustic ecology, landscape ecology, bioacoustics, urban and environmental
acoustics, behavioral ecology, and biosemiotics.
Soundscape ecology finds important applications in the assessment of the envi-
ronmental quality of parks and protected areas, in urban planning and design, in
ethology and anthropology, and finally in long-term monitoring of the effects of
climatic changes.