Soundscape and Landscape Ecology - Soundscape Ecology: Principles, Patterns, Methods and Applications - page 26

The soundscape is the result of the overlap of three distinct sonic sources:
geophonies, biophonies, and anthrophonies.
The geophonies are the result of sonic energy produced by nonbiological natural
agents such as wind, volcanoes, sea waves, running water, rain, thunderstorms,
lightning, avalanches, earthquakes, and flooding.
The biophonies are the results of animal vocalizations (song, calls, alarms,
voices).
The anthrophonies are the result of all the sounds produced by technical devices
(engines, blades, wheel revolutions, industries, etc.).
According to distributive attributes, we distinguish a background and a fore-
ground sonic environment. The background refers to every sound mixed all
together that has information that cannot be more distinct in the composing parts.
The background sonic environment is strictly connected with the characteristics of
geographic landscapes. The foreground sonic environment refers to sound close to
the perception point (listener) and becomes an information structure that has a
relevant role in shaping local acoustic communities.
Hi-Fi and Lo-Fi are further possibilities to distinguish categories of the sonic
environment. Hi-Fi (high fidelity) means a sonic context in which is possible to
distinguish many acoustic details such as the song of birds or the chirp of crickets.
The Lo-Fi (low fidelity) is a sonic ambient in which the noise component prevails
and is not possible to distinguish individual sonic signals and where a sonic
message must be reinforced in amplitude to be received. Foreground/background
and Hi-Fi/Lo-Fi are concepts of the sonic environment that have a common
epistemology, and different combinations of these four categories determines
sonic environments with distinct characters.
The landscape represent the basic structure from which sounds originate, and to
better understand sonic dynamics it is necessary to have well in mind the basic
concepts of the landscape (ecology). At least three different perspectives can be
used to describe the landscape and its associated soundscape: a geographic per-
spective, an ecological perspective, and a cognitive perspective.
At least three models can explain the relationships between soundscape and
landscape: the first model considers a perfect overlap between the geographic
components of the landscape and the sonic components, a second model considers
the sonic environment at a coarser scale compared with the landscape structure, and
the third model recognizes a finer resolution to the soundscape.
From this last model is derived the definition of sonotope as the result of spatial
overlap of geophonic, biophonic, and anthrophonic patterns. Each sonotope for
effect of behavioral constraints can be further subdivided into soundtopes. In the
zone of contact between different soundtopes, tension zones of acoustic uncertainty
are called sonotones.
The sonic component of the environment can be consider a resource, and
according to the general theory of resources the sonic component represents a
specific resource necessary to organisms to survive. For instance, a male frog
calling is for a female a mating resource indispensable for concluding the