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

最近的科学研究表明，人为产生的声音可以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。这个跨学科的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的人类活动中的作用，研究自然系统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。该项目将加深对噪音对鸟类多样性和人类感知和行动的互动影响的基本认识。该项目将为以下假设提供检验：当人为噪音充斥声景时，鸟类多样性下降，野生动物和声环境的个体和群体价值下降，从而减少对自然保护的支持，从而进一步降低鸟类多样性。该项目还将测试一个推论假设，即当自然声音是声学环境的主要输入时，自然声音通过维持生物多样性和更积极的人类对自然世界的看法以及人类对自然的整体体验而产生积极影响。这项研究将由来自不同领域的跨学科研究人员进行，包括生态学、动物学、经济学、资源管理、人与环境相互作用、工程学和教育学，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，为有效管理自然区域做出贡献。研究人员将通过积极雇用公民科学家收集数据来进一步扩大项目的影响，从而增加参与研究工作的人对科学概念和技术的知识、认识和理解。该项目还将为本科生和研究生以及博士后研究人员提供特殊的跨学科教育和培训机会。本项目由美国国家科学基金会自然与人类系统耦合动力学（CNH）项目资助。调查人员将在地方和区域范围内开展这个项目。在地方尺度上，他们将对声环境的自然和人类相关成分进行回放实验，以通过鸟类多样性的变化、人类对空间的利用和人类福祉来检验感官意识。他们将通过实验研究背景声级与城市生物多样性之间的关系，以及背景声级与人类自然经验之间的耦合关系。他们将使用扬声器阵列来操纵当地自然区域的声景。在一组实验中，他们将通过增加额外的交通噪音来人为地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进行实验，回放含有不同种类的鸟类，但声功率相同的鸟类合唱，将这些实验的数据与调查和生物标志物的数据相结合，以测量对不同声音刺激的心理益处和生理反应。在区域尺度上，研究人员将评估声音管理策略如何影响大提顿国家公园鸟类和人类对空间的利用，他们将评估人类在不同策略下对它们的体验的评价。

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.