Listening to the land: assessing agricultural health through sound

Abstract

Noise is a major issue affecting human and environmental health. In addition soil health and also agricultural health may be affected by the specific pressure. The aim of this research was to assess the sound environment of two specific fields in the college area. In addition, it was determined whether these two land areas are more consistent compared to other fields in the area. Our hypothesis is that environmental noise negatively affects acoustic complexity and biodiversity. The main tool was a sound recorder used to collect information on the noise levels of the area under consideration. Audacity software was used to process the audio samples collected and R statistics software was implemented for the extraction of acoustic indicators. The results show that the findings of this study suggest that anthropogenic noise has the potential to significantly influence the ecological integrity and biodiversity of rural environments. In conclusion, chronic exposure to elevated sound levels, often associated with vehicular traffic and human activity, can disrupt natural acoustic habitats that many species rely upon for communication, foraging, mating, and predator avoidance.