ShareThisThe acoustical coolness of a canyon breeze. The roll of thunder dissolving into the falling rain. The cacophonous recital of machinery, vehicles and jets soaring overhead. It's all taken into account in the "Soundscape Management Plan" for Zion National Park.
The plan, adopted Sept. 17, has been in the works for more than three years, and is the first of its kind in a major national park. Its purpose is protecting attributes of sound -- and the lack of it -- for the benefit of wildlife and the nearly 3 million annual visitors to the southern Utah park.
Since 2007, the park has used portable, solar-powered monitoring stations to record sound as well as to measure weather and wind speed. The devices monitor an area 24 hours a day, for up to 28 days at a time. That information was analyzed to map sound in the park.
Frank Turina, of Fort Collins, Colo., a planner with the natural sounds program for the National Park Service and project manager for the Zion document, said an area's soundscape is as valuable as air quality and watershed although, unlike those resources, it is intangible.
"Sound has an inherent value to the park that we want to preserve and protect for the future," Turina said in a telephone interview.
He said the new plan uses the science of acoustics to specify conditions under which park managers would need to act to protect and preserve the soundscape of Zion. That science gives the plan objectivity and credibility.
"It is a very interesting and new application of old science to protect natural areas in the park," he said. "This (project) is on the cutting edge."
One focus of the study was determining the length of time between human-caused sounds in the back country. Most of those sounds are made by commercial and private aircraft, including helicopters.
"We want longer periods between noise events in the back country," said Turina. "Now it's two to three minutes before you hear a human-caused sound, usually involving an overflight, and we want to expand that to a seven-minute period. If we meet that goal we will reassess the situation to see if a longer interval is warranted."
According to Turina, human-caused sounds particularly affect wildlife. A change of only three decibels can have a drastic effect on whether predators can detect prey, he said.
To put that in perspective, conversation between people standing three feet from each other generates an average of about 60 decibels, while a car going 50 miles per hour generates about 70 decibels, Turina said. "The pain threshold is 110 to 120 decibels."
In the "front" area of the park, including entrance areas and locations of public facilities, the goal is to reduce noise through changing employee activities and technology.
That can range from something as simple as using rakes and brooms instead of leaf blowers, to using technology that reduces noise when replacing shuttles and park vehicles.
Kezia Nielsen, an environmental protection specialist who worked on the project, said the plan will enhance the visitor experience.
"Surveys have shown that 90 percent of people who visit the national parks want natural quiet and to be able to hear the sounds of nature," she said. "They cannot have that experience with human-caused sound."
Nielsen said monitoring stations around the park will be maintained to collect information for further analysis on night and daytime acoustics.
"It's amazing what you can hear when you take the time to listen," she said. "It's important for people who get out of the big cities to be able to hear nature, from the rustling of the wind to even insects moving through leaves."
Park superintendent Jock Whitworth is proud Zion is taking the lead in developing such a plan and hopes other parks follow. Discussions on the soundscape began in 2001 as part of the park's General Management Plan.
"We looked at the plan for years and decided (sound) is a natural resource to protect so we began gathering data," he said. "It's important to have and preserve those ambient sounds of water, wind, birds and other animals."
(E-mail reporter Mark Havnes at mhavnes(at)sltrib.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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