Environmental Noise Assessment and Analysis for a Sustainable Environment

Dear Colleagues,

In the ever-changing modern society, the presence of noise has become a daily threat to a worryingly large proportion of the population. However, it is not only humans who are affected by noise: studies have proven that noise exposure caused by humans has a negative impact on wildlife, inducing non-natural migrations, reproductive problems and even long-term survival concerns. Moreover, sounds are used by animals to communicate, navigate, interact socially, reproduce, take care of broods, and perform a wide variety of other functions.

Thus, the protection of the environment from the encroaching expansion of human activities needs a firm response from the entire scientific community in terms of developing a shared awareness of harmful effects on human health and on the entire ecosystem. Natural habitats, both terrestrial and aquatic, are strongly affected by human-made sounds from devices such as engines, cars, cargo ships and musical instruments. These sound sources, generally referred to as technophonies, add to acoustic diversity and often mask natural sounds. Hence, the necessity of extracting information from environments teeming with sounds requires a wide array of strategies in order to analyse, assess, predict and possibly mitigate the effects of such noise exposure on wildlife. The identification of acoustic events, new methods for soundscape assessments, studies on communication interference, and potential effects of exposure on invertebrates and vegetation are still hot topics that remain incompletely understood.

This Special Issue aims to collect recent studies and solutions, bringing together researchers from different disciplines in order to provide a fuller picture of this topic.

This Special Issue also aims to to encourage governmental organizations to include the complexity of the natural soundscape into the current regulatory system and to consider it as a guideline for the creation and restoration of sustainable environments.

Dr. Roberto Benocci
Dr. Giovanni Zambon
Guest Editors

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• soundscape analysis
• new techniques of analysis of environment sound
• effect of noise on wildlife (terrestrial and marine)
• recognition of noise sources
• automated detection of disturbing sounds
• ecoacoustics
• bioacoustics