[MARMAM] New paper on averaging shipping noise levels (Nathan Merchant)

[ndm23 at bath.ac.uk]

Dear Colleagues,

my co-authors and I are pleased to announce the publication of a paper  
examining methods of averaging shipping noise levels for environmental  
impact assessment. This work has particular relevance to policymakers  
concerned with long-term underwater noise trends and researchers  
investigating the effects of chronic noise exposure on marine life:

Averaging underwater noise levels for environmental assessment of shipping
Nathan D. Merchant, Philippe Blondel, D. Tom Dakin, and John Dorocicz,
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 132 (4), EL343-EL349  
(2012), DOI:10.1121/1.4754429

Abstract

Rising underwater noise levels from shipping have raised concerns  
regarding chronic impacts to marine fauna. However, there is a lack of  
consensus over how to average local shipping noise levels for  
environmental impact assessment. This paper addresses this issue using  
110 days of continuous data recorded in the Strait of Georgia, Canada.  
Probability densities of ?10^7 1-s samples in selected 1/3 octave  
bands were approximately stationary across one-month subsamples.  
Median and mode levels varied with averaging time. Mean sound pressure  
levels averaged in linear space, though susceptible to strong bias  
from outliers, are most relevant to cumulative impact assessment  
metrics.

This journal is open access and the paper can be downloaded free of  
charge here:

http://link.aip.org/link/?JAS/132/EL343

Kind regards,

Nathan Merchant
PhD Researcher
Department of Physics
University of Bath
BA2 7AY, UK

+44 1225 385543

n.d.merchant at bath.ac.uk
http://people.bath.ac.uk/ndm23/