noise in the anthropocene conference

Newly designated as pollution in the 1960s, noise shifts from “nuisance” to a dispersed, undefined, and atmospheric condition. Noise pollution echoes and amplifies environmental imaginaries of its time while prefiguring a logic of climate change. This coalesces around noise’s atmospheric qualities: emergent in and through perception, it is at once ephemeral and indeterminate. Noise prepares us for the unwanted, undesirable, and unpleasant sensations of climate change—an atmosphere becoming too hot for human habitation, in which the comforts of contemporary life are potentially lost. At the same time, a generalized concept of climate echoes the pervasive and systemic nature of noise pollution. Like noise, climate change is inherently uncertain and indefinite. Yet the spatiotemporal scale of noise limits its perdurance as a concern both in itself and for environmental imaginaries. This has consequences not only for the parameters of “noise” that count as noise pollution but for the import of the category and its relation to environmental thought. If noise pollution had been based on something like “whistlers,” it might have taken a hemispheric scale. Instead, noise pollution falls away: there is no place for it in a totalizing rubric of climate change.

Brazil is a leader in the Global South in terms of rapid installation of wind power capacity, which has been built near host communities that are politically and economically marginalized, giving rise to numerous forms of subtle contention and overt opposition. Knowledge is increasing with regards to land-tenure conflicts, licensing fraud, and opinions of host communities, but sound impacts from wind turbines in Brazil are poorly known in comparison with North American and European contexts. Here we quantitatively investigate noise levels and qualitatively analyze how residents of the community of Xavier, comprised mainly of artisanal fishers, in western Ceará state perceive the noise of the turbines of a wind farm installed only 250m away from the nearest residence.

Measurement of sound levels determined that noise levels between 34 and 57.2 dB(A) by day and 46.2 and 60.4 at night, which are greater than recommendations of the Brazilian government (40 dB and 35 dB, respectively). Survey data obtained for the host community (n=78) indicated that approximately 20% of respondents experienced discomfort from turbine noise or difficulty adjusting to noise, although one-third indicated that they worried about human health impacts from wind turbines. Qualitative data suggest that opponents of wind farms have negative reactions to noise from turbines. Future research on noise from wind farms in Brazil should apply rigorous methodologies that allow for international comparisons. Wind farm operators should measure noise levels before and during the construction of the wind farm and establish a measurement routine during operation to identify irregularities and make comparisons to pre-wind farm noise levels.

Oceans had lower sound levels at low frequencies, likely corresponding to lower levels of shipping traffic across those areas. Long-term time series from a site in the eastern North Pacific showed decrease in low frequency ambient sound in 2009-10 relative to 2004, presumably the result of decrease in worldwide shipping during the global recession. However, the trends since then have been variable and harder to interpret in the light of shipping trends.

At most monitored locations there was a strong seasonal contribution to ambient sound from marine mammal calls, most commonly blue and fin whales, but also humpback whales. Understanding of ambient sound trends is important for developing baselines on the levels of noise marine animals may be exposed and used to in their environment. Additionally, it allows placing any increases in noise and experiments on noise impacts into appropriate context of ocean ambient sound.

In this presentation, I analyze the Tejo estuary as a contested space where a series of transport and construction projects are creating ecological controversies and increased sonic baselines. The Tejo estuary and Natural Reserve is surrounded by commercial exploration projects that expand its potential as a logistical hub, connecting several ports in Portugal. Alongside it projects such as a new airport and floating city are planned to answer to the recent tourism boom in the city of Lisbon, leading to significant alterations of the sonic landscape. Coastal areas and other aquatic infrastructures are being designed in alliance with the blue economy agenda and the 2030 sustainable development goals, with contradictory applications of sustainable politics.

I draw parallels with socio-economic and ecological conflicts that have taken place in recent years, with a focus on migratory work in the estuary, increased cruise traffic, or the 2017 Portuguese fires. To do so, I introduce different activist movements and scientific research studies developing awareness campaigns in the area, as well as my practice as a sound artist, and educator.

During the past decades, much has been learned about how fish and marine mammals hear, and how they react to and make use of sound while diving for fish. Many species of fish, seals and whales react to human-made sound, sometimes causing them harm. Much less is known about how marine birds hear, and how they react to and exploit underwater sound cues. For the past years, we studied the hearing abilities and reaction to underwater sound in fish-hunting species such as cormorants, murres and penguins. Cormorants were found to have acute hearing abilities under water, and both gentoo penguins and common murres reacted to under water noise bursts of moderate sound intensities. This indicates that many species of marine birds can perceive underwater sound and react adequately to it. What underwater sound cues would be important for marine birds to listen in to while diving, and how vulnerable would marine birds be when exposed to different kinds of human underwater sounds?

Humans have categorized unwanted sounds in the environment as noise. As such, noise is typically associated with negative human and ecological values, especially when derived from an anthropogenic source. Although evidence has confirmed that anthropogenic noise has negative impacts on animal behavior and animal communication, noise is often dismissed in ecoacoustics as an outside factor of acoustic habitats rather than an integrated sonic component of their ecological dynamics. Yet, the proliferation and extent of anthropogenic noise in the Biosphere are unavoidable.

Conversely, “background noise” classified as geophonies (rain, wind, water), is a significant component of environmental acoustic studies. In fact, the geophonies have very important sonic implications to the communication, behaviors, occupancy, and evolution of soniferous species. Even though these sounds are seemingly ever-present in ecoacoustics and bioacoustics studies, very little work has addressed the role of noise in ecological processes. New techniques to process large data sets and separate geophonies within recordings using ecoacoustic metrics like the Acoustic Complexity Indices open new possibilities to understand the ecology of geophonies in the context of their sonoscapes.

This presentation shifts the focus from sustained work on cities as sites of noise to explore how urban wastelands can serve as ‘sonic refugia’; breathing spaces from the sensorial intensities of urban life. Urban ecological research has drawn our attention to the presence of nature in abandoned spaces. Former railway yards, decommissioned airports, and other technological relics provide the substrate for new ecological assemblages. At the same time, these abandoned ecologies have particular ambient qualities that speak to the corporeal experience of urban space. Drawing on a range of historical and contemporary examples from Berlin, the presentation examines the sonic qualities and cultures of urban wastelands.

Soil mostly presents itself to us as a diverse surface, the interior of which remains hidden from us. We cannot see the manifold organisms and life processes present in soils, but we may hear them if we listen more closely. Soil animals use the substrate as communication medium and form a complex soundscape. Land use and land management  as well es climate change may have a big impact on the soil soundscape – the acoustic complexity of a local soil animal community can serve as indicator of a functioning soil ecosystem. In the Sounding Soil project, we implement and apply ecoacoustic methods to investigate the spatial and temporal dynamics in soil biodiversity and community composition.