Citizen scientists and university students monitor noise pollution in cities and protected areas with smartphones

Abstract

Noise pollution can cause increased stress, cognitive impairment and illness in humans and decreased fitness and altered behavior in wildlife. Maps of noise pollution are used to visualize the distribution of noise across a landscape. These maps are typically created by taking a relatively small number of sound measurements or simulated on the basis of theoretical models. However, smartphones with inexpensive sound measuring apps can be used to monitor noise and create dense maps of real-world noise measurements. Public concern with noise can make monitoring noise pollution with smartphones an engaging and educational citizen science activity. We demonstrate a method utilizing single-day citizen science noise mapping events and a university lab to collect noise data in urban environments and protected areas. Using this approach, we collected hundreds of noise measurements with participants that we used to create noise maps. We found this method was successful in engaging volunteers and students and producing usable noise data. The described methodology has potential applications for biological research, citizen science engagement, and teaching.

Effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on noise pollution in three protected areas in metropolitan Boston (USA)

“…The sound levels in these urban parks range from 30 (very quiet) to 80 (very noisy) dB, so for the purposes of this study this variability in measurements is minor and acceptable. In addition, SPLnFFT is highly consistent between measurements and among iPhone versions ( Zipf et al, 2020 ), which is an important requirement in a study with multiple people and three separate sites.…”

“…According to Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) traffic data, volume on major roads was down 67% in March, and down 30% in July; this is particularly notable considering that 2020 traffic volume prior to the lockdowns was up 3–5% from 2019 ( MassDOT, 2020 ). This lower traffic volume might be expected to reduce the amount of noise pollution in protected areas, as traffic is a primary source of noise in these areas ( Zipf et al, 2020 ). At the same time, the number of people using urban protected areas has been reported to be higher than normal, and increased human activity could create more noise in these parks ( Brown et al, 2012 ).…”

Citizen Science as Part of the Primary School Curriculum: A Case Study of a Technical Day on the Topic of Noise and Health

“…Each group was led by one of the mentors, who managed the app and helped pupils answer the questions, in which they were asked to choose the correct or incorrect answer from a list. The questions covered the following six general themes: the sound's physical characteristics as a wave (Q: 1-4); the sound's general characteristics (Q: 9, 6, 5); (fun) facts about sound (Q: 8,10,11,14,15,17); sound/noise sensing (Q: 7, 12, 13); sound measurements (Q: 18,19,20,21); and sound exposure (Q: 16,22).…”

“…Topics often addressed in the school environment involving citizen science concepts include, but are not limited to, biodiversity [13][14][15], human exposure, environmental health, lifestyle, and climate change [16][17][18][19]. In this paper, we summarise lessons learned conducting citizen science activities within the CitieS-Health H2020 project (https://citieshealth.eu/) on the topic of noise exposure and health at a primary school in Ljubljana, Slovenia, organised in the form of a School Tech-Day Event (STDE) as part of the school's curriculum.…”

Marine Citizen Science: Current State in Europe and New Technological Developments

“…Through its working groups, ECSA members have developed the 10 principles for citizen science, and contributed to the citizen science ontology demarcation (Eitzel et al, 2017), developed multiple policy briefs addressing the contribution of citizen science to open science, do-it-yourself (DIY) science, defined principles and collected best practices for mobile applications for environmental and biodiversity citizen science (Luna et al, 2018;Sturm et al, 2018) and systematised the characteristics of citizen science to help users, participants, scientist, policy makers and research funders making open and transparent decisions by following a group of defined criteria for identifying the type of activities that belong to citizen science. It is more and more common that research and educational institutions as well as natural areas managers use citizen science to support their studies and monitoring programmes (Freiwald et al, 2018;Irwin, 2018;Wyler and Haklay, 2018;Zipf et al, 2020).…”