On the noise generated by park visitors along hiking trails

Abstract

In assessing the sound environment of a park, visitor noise along trails may be important because of its affect upon: (1) the unaltered park environment, (2) wildlife, and (3) other park visitors. Just as noise in residential communities has been correlated with population density we set out to see if the noise level along trails would correlate with visitor density. In the summer of 2011, measurements were made using two sites, one on each of two trails. These measurements included 1-second LEQ measurements at an array of four trailside microphones, and recording of the number of park visitors entering the measurement zone during each minute. Examination of the data revealed little correlation between a 5-minute measurement of the LEQ and density of trail visitors. The problem was that the smallest time increment in which we could accurately portray the number of park visitors was about 5 minutes, using the 1-minute totals, and in a 5-minute period visitor noise would too rarely equal or exceed the ambient. Thus no relation between visitor density and trail side noise could be found. Additional analysis was done with data to better understand the limiting factors of the measurement.