Most national forests in the US are located in rural parts of the country. Parts of these forests can be difficult to access and therefore far from the noise of the city. For this reason, they offer a kind of sanctuary for the urbanite to temporarily escape the noise pollution of urbanization and development.
However, even in these serene locations, it isn’t always easy to avoid noises from human activity.
I took this video a few months ago while working in Ouachita National Forest in western Arkansas. This is a C-130 and it’s a common sight over Little Rock and the surrounding area.
They tend to fly low over the forest and can sound ominous when directly overhead.
Though aircraft like this are important for the military, I started to wonder what impact noise pollution might have on people trying to enjoy the outdoors, and also on wildlife.
What is Noise Pollution?
When we hear the word pollution, we might think of plastics floating in the ocean, toxic chemicals being dumped into streams, or noxious gases being released into the atmosphere. Noise pollution is somewhat different in that it is less tangible and can be much easier to remove from the environment.
The term noise pollution can be subjective in the way we define it, because what one person interprets as annoying sounds, may be enjoyable to another. For this article, we’ll think of noise pollution as sounds that can be distracting and are removed from the typical sounds we associate with a particular environment. Noise pollution is also associated with human activity.
For example, in the context of a hiker in the forest, the sound of traffic from a nearby highway is considered noise pollution.
Impact on Humans
We have only recently began to understand the impacts that noise pollution can have on humans. Some of these impacts range from increased stress, increased blood pressure, and disruptive sleep patterns.
Impact on Wildlife
Many wildlife species rely on sounds for reproduction and mating. Frogs for example, rely on croaking to call mates. When their calls are drowned out by traffic or other human activity, they are less likely to find mating partners.
Songbirds spend much of the early spring months calling to attract mating partners. They also use calls to establish territories.
I remember attending a lecture in graduate school that was given by a researcher looking at the effects of nearby traffic on frog calls. What they found was that the frogs with higher-pitched croaks were better able to communicate with mates and, therefore, were better adapted to passing on their genes.
It doesn’t seem like the aircrafts will stop flying over the Ouachita anytime soon, but hopefully there will be more research done in this area to better understand their impact.
Dig Deeper
There is a great video and a podcast I came across that both discuss noise pollution in different contexts. The video specifically addresses the problem of noise pollution from aircraft in protected areas of the Pacific Northwest, and the podcast helps to clearly define noise ollution and some of its effects on humans and wildlife.