Using visitor responses to rank-order national park soundscapes

Abstract

Simultaneous collection of acoustic data and surveying of visitors at sites in national parks has permitted development of ‘‘dose-response’’ curves. These curves show what percent of visitors reported annoyance or interference with ‘‘natural quiet’’ from tour aircraft noise, as a function of the aircraft sound. Two measures of aircraft sound correlated reasonably with the visitor responses: percent of time aircraft were audible and difference between the aircraft and the nonaircraft produced equivalent level, Leq. Using the relationships between these two visitor responses and these two measures of aircraft sound, a framework is developed that permits a rank ordering of park locations in terms of visitor reaction, once these two metrics have been measured at the location.