CNH: Sound as an Element in Coupled Natural and Human Systems

最近的科学研究表明，人类发出的声音可对自然生态系统的功能和特征以及人类福祉产生重大影响。这一跨学科研究项目将通过分析声学在影响鸟类数量和多样性以及相关人类活动方面的作用，研究自然和人类系统之间的相互作用，因为它们受到人类产生的声音的影响。该项目将加强对噪音对鸟类多样性以及对人类感知和行动的互动影响的基本了解。该项目将对这一假设进行检验，即当人为噪音充满声音景观时，随着鸟类多样性的下降，野生动物的个人和群体价值以及声环境也会下降，从而减少对自然保护的支持，从而进一步降低鸟类多样性的下降。该项目还将测试推论，即当自然声音是声环境的主要输入时，自然声音通过维护生物多样性和更积极的人类对自然世界的感知以及人类与自然的整体体验具有积极的影响。由于这项研究将由一个跨学科的研究团队进行，研究人员来自不同的领域，包括生态学、动物学、经济学、资源管理、人与环境相互作用、工程和教育，因此它将促进社会科学和生态科学的整合，以更好地评估和探索各种管理方法，为自然区域的有效管理做出贡献。调查人员将通过积极雇用公民科学家收集数据，从而提高参与研究工作的人对科学概念和技术的知识、意识和理解，从而进一步提高该项目的影响。该项目还将为本科生和研究生以及博士后研究人员提供专门的跨学科教育和培训机会。该项目得到了美国自然与人类耦合系统动力学(CNH)项目的支持。研究人员将在当地和区域范围内开展这一项目。在地方尺度上，他们将对声环境的自然和与人类相关的部分进行回放实验，以检查通过鸟类多样性、人类对空间的利用和人类福祉的变化来衡量感官意识。他们将通过实验研究背景声级和城市生物多样性之间的关系，以及它与人类在自然界的体验之间的耦合关系。他们将使用扬声器阵列来操纵当地自然区域的音景。在一组实验中，他们将通过增加额外的交通噪音来人为提高自然区域的噪音水平，以评估其对鸟类生物多样性和人类感知的影响。他们还将在实验室和城市公园的环境中试验鸟类合唱的回放，这些合唱包含不同数量的鸟类，但声功率相同，将这些实验的数据与调查和生物标记物的数据结合起来，以衡量不同声音刺激的心理益处和生理反应。在区域范围内，研究人员将评估健全的管理策略如何影响大提顿国家公园的鸟类和人类对空间的使用，他们还将评估在不同策略下他们的经历对人类的价值。

Recent scientific research has demonstrated that human-generated sound can have a significant impact on the functioning and character of natural ecosystems and on human well-being. This interdisciplinary research project will study the interactions between natural and human systems as they are influenced by human-generated sound through analyses of the role of acoustics in affecting the number and diversity of birds and related human activity. The project will enhance basic understanding of the interactive effects that noise has on bird diversity and on the perceptions and actions of people. The project will provide a test of the hypothesis that as bird diversity declines when human-made noise fills the soundscape, individual and group valuation of wildlife and the acoustic environment decline, thereby reducing support for nature conservation, which ratchets declines in bird diversity further downward. The project also will test the corollary hypothesis that when natural sounds are a dominant input to the acoustic environment, the natural sounds have positive effects though the maintenance of biodiversity and more positive human perceptions of the natural world and the overall human experience with nature. Because the research will be conducted by an interdisciplinary team of researchers drawn from a diverse set of fields, including ecology, zoology, economics, resource management, human-environmental interactions, engineering, and education, it will advance the integration of social and ecological sciences to better assess and explore varied management approaches to contribute to the effective management of natural areas. The investigators will further the project's impact by actively employing citizen scientists in the collection of data, thereby increasing knowledge, awareness, and understanding of scientific concepts and techniques among those involved in the research effort. The project also will provide special interdisciplinary education and training opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students and for post-doctoral researchers. This project is supported by the NSF Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems (CNH) Program.The investigators will conduct this project at both local and regional scales. At the local-scale, they will conduct playback experiments of the natural and human-related components of acoustic environments to examine sensory awareness gauged through changes in bird diversity, the use of space by people, and human well-being. They will experimentally examine the relationship between background sound level and urban biodiversity as well as its coupled relationship with human experience in nature. They will manipulate the soundscape of local natural areas using arrays of speakers. In one set of experiments, they will artificially elevate noise levels in natural areas by adding additional traffic noise to assess its impact on bird biodiversity and human perceptions. They also will experiment with the playback of bird choruses containing varying numbers of bird species but the same acoustic power in laboratory and city park settings, coupling data from these experiments with data from surveys and biomarkers to measure the psychological benefits and physiological response to different sound stimuli. At the regional scale, the investigators will evaluate how sound-management strategies affect space use by birds and people in Grand Teton National Park, and they will assess the human valuation of their experiences under different strategies.