The Influence of Green Infrastructure on the Urban Acoustic Environment

• Applicant: Professor Dr.-Ing. Dietwald Gruehn
• Subject Area: City Planning, Spatial Planning, Transportation and Infrastructure Planning, Landscape Planning
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 530070260

Research about sound in urban environments is dominated by measurements of sound pressure levels and the reduction of impacts of the physical and psychological effects of the sound wave on humans. Comparatively less is known about the daily or seasonal pattern of sound in areas where noise effects do not affect humans. Overwhelmingly such areas are natural areas with particular landscape functions and in various states of conservation, protection, or active recreation. This project moves towards the nexus of landscape ecology and ecoacoustic indices to evaluate the distribution of sound in urban, peri-urban, and rural green infrastructure and natural areas away from sources of noise pollution. The project aims to fill a research gap in the understanding of daily and seasonal patterns and driving factors for acoustic environment outcomes within and outside of the urban fabric. The project is organized as a case study focused on ‘Naturräume’ that intersect Bochum, where our SALVE project collected a 3 year dataset of sound in over 800 ‘Wohngebiet’ locations across the city. This case study selection enables evaluation of a gradient of green infrastructure to natural areas against already collected sound data from urban and residential areas to place the differences in direct human context. We seek to clarify the relationship between green infrastructure and the delivery of the ecosystem service ‘quiet, natural, biophonic, or restorative’ areas. Spatial, temporal, ecological, and seasonal factors are used to explain the observed phenomena and to generate basic knowledge for application and knowledge transfer to other disciplines. The project is envisioned as a three-year project of sound data collection, transformation of sound data to quantitative acoustic indices based on the state of the art, and analysis of sound in differentiated natural areas in conjunction with existing sound data in a wide range of urban areas from SALVE. The sample design is based on a multi-tier sample pool of 1) designed green spaces in the urban environment, 2) large natural areas within Bochum away from road and rail, and 3) natural areas well outside of the developed Ruhr area where the agricultural matrix dominates amongst natural areas. Of special interest in the sample design and analysis phases is the influence of biotope diversity, natural vegetation and nature protection status on the delivery of the landscape function ‘natural or biophonic soundscape’ as a finite resource. The modest project effort requires a single post-doc project manager and three student assistants. But the data produced will no doubt be the seed for many “Nachwuchswissenschaftler*innen” as has been the case in LLP since 2016. We propose a modest supplementation of our existing recording device array to enable a larger number of spatial and temporal samples for this project. All sampling and field protocols are based on peer-review publications from SALVE, detailed in the research proposal.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants