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FHWA → ENVIRONMENT → Noise → Noise Effect On Wildlife → Effects

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This report contains a summary of ongoing work on the effects of noise on wildlife populations to date. It will hopefully provide some indication of the current state of knowledge in the area – particularly with respect to studies of birds that have spurred increased discussion of the subject. No effort was made to evaluate the methodologies applied to any individual study although a large number have appeared in peer-reviewed journals and thus have already been scrutinized. Because the numbers and/or diversity of species have been used as indicators of the effects of noise, a number of studies that have indicated one or both of these factors for species alongside roads are included although noise is not specifically mentioned in some of these. Studies that directly measure the number of individuals or breeding along roadsides provide the most direct indication of the response of populations to road noise. This is supported by those studies in which noise has been used as the best predictor of the negative response of species to roads in recent studies (see Reijnen and colleagues (41, 96-100); Forman et al.(45)).

SI* (Modern Metric) Conversion Factors

*SI is the symbol for the International System of Units. Appropriate rounding should be made to comply with Section 4 of ASTM E380.
(Revised March 2003)

List Of Abbreviations And Symbols

SPL = sound production level
dB = decibel = unit of sound production level (logarithmic scale)
dB(A) = decibel on A-weighted scale (levels weighted according to sound frequency)

Leq = equivalent continuous sound level
SEL = sound equivalent level integrated per 1 second

Hz = hertz = cycles per second (measure of sound frequency)
kHz = kilohertz (thousand hertz)

ROW = rights-of-way

Updated: 6/27/2017