Natural soundscapes of lowland river habitats and the potential threat of urban noise pollution to migratory fish

Abstract

Migratory fish populations have experienced great declines, and considerable effort have been put into reducing stressors, such as chemical pollution and physical barriers. However, the importance of natural sounds as an information source and potential problems caused by noise pollution remain largely unexplored. The spatial distribution of sound sources and variation in propagation characteristics could provide migratory fish with acoustic cues about habitat suitability, predator presence, food availability and conspecific presence. We here investigated the relationship between natural soundscapes and local river conditions and we explored the presence of human-related sounds in these natural soundscapes. We found that 1a) natural river sound profiles vary with river scale and cross-sectional position, and that 1b) depth, width, water velocity, and distance from shore were all significant factors in explaining local soundscape variation. We also found 2a) audible human activities in almost all our underwater recordings and urban and suburban river parts had elevated sound levels relative to rural river parts. Furthermore, 2b) daytime levels were louder than night time sound levels, and bridges and nearby road traffic were much more prominent with diurnal and weekly patterns of anthropogenic noise in the river systems. We believe our data show high potential for natural soundscapes of low-land river habitat to serve as important environmental cues to migratory fish. However, anthropogenic noise may be particularly problematic due to the omnipresence, and relatively loud levels relative to the modest dynamic range of the natural sound sources, in these slow-flowing freshwater systems.