Soundscape and Landscape Ecology - Soundscape Ecology: Principles, Patterns, Methods and Applications - page 2

1.1 Introduction

Access of all sensory perceptions represents a necessary step toward sustainability,
expressed not only in terms of ecosystem carrying capacity but also by the growth
and maintenance of the quality of human life. The aesthetic dimension of
sustainability is largely represented by the quality of the sonic environment in
urban, rural, and wild contexts.
Although sonic cues contribute to landscape shaping and functioning, little is
known about the relationships between the sonic environment and landscapes. As
well expressed by Hedfors and Berg ( 2003 )“ the sparseness of literature on
auditory aspects of landscapes reflects the hegemony of vision ” when compared
with the sonic component of the environment.
Moreover, an informed design could contribute to accomplish this neglected
perspective and open a way toward a more healthy environment.
It is our aim in this first chapter to introduce the theoretical bases necessary to
fully understand the importance and the function of the sonic environment for so
many organisms, humans included, and to describe the mechanisms that are at the
basis of active and passive sonic communication. We try to describe the highest
number of problematics in which acoustics emissions are embedded, such as
overexposure, sound degradation, and sound masking.
Sound is an important component of the majority of terrestrial, freshwater, and
marine ecosystems and becomes an essential context with which organisms daily
interact performing their vital functions. Sound is transmitted in air and in water as
well, but soil and rock are permeable to vibration to some extent. Thus, the
transmission of sounds that occurs in solids, in liquids, and in a gas medium has
different and distinct physical modalities (such as speed, impedance, excess of
attenuation). For this reason, we can expect different mechanisms of perception and
strategies of communication used by organisms living in these different contexts,
that is, we expect different “sonic ecologies.”
We can say that every phase of matter and every type of material reacts
differently to sound waves (vibration), and this can be useful from remote sensing
procedures to monitoring the dynamics of environmental context and an organism's
behavior.

1.2 A Semantic Caveat: Sound, Sonic, Acoustic

Although there are not precise rules about the more appropriate use of some terms
(Brown et al. 2011 ), in this topic we have used words such as sound, sonic, and
acoustic with precise meanings and for specific purposes:

Sound refers to the informative energy that participates in the physical phenomenon
of pressure waves of a vibrating object.