科学美国人60秒 SSS 人类噪音害苦了野生生灵（在线收听）

Wilderness Areas Suffer from Human Sound 人类噪音害苦了野生生灵

“Noise can prevent an animal from hearing other important sounds.”

“噪音会妨碍动物听到其他重要的声音。”

Rachel Buxton, a conservation biologist at Colorado State University. Buxton and colleagues wanted to see, or rather hear, whether sounds made by human activity—called anthropogenic sound, think airplanes, highway traffic, heavy machinery—were significant in protected areas around the country.

雷切尔·布克斯顿是科罗拉多州立大学的一名保护生物学家。布克斯顿和同事们希望看到，或者更确切地说是听到，人类活动发出的声音，即人为的声音——飞机噪音、公路交通声、重型机械声——是否对全国的保护区具有重要意义。

“Park Service engineers on our team used over a million hours of acoustic measurements taken from 492 sites around the contiguous United States. And they built a sound model…so to get at an idea of noise pollution, we used two thresholds: where anthropogenic noise raises sound levels three and 10 decibels above natural.”

“我们团队的公园服务工程师在美国492个连续站点使用100多万小时的声学测量建立了一个声音模型……为了获得‘噪声污染’的概念，我们使用两个临界值:人类产生的噪音使声音在自然水平上提高了3到10分贝。”

Which translates to a doubling and 10-times increase in sound levels. Buxton and her team determined that humans were responsible for doubling the sound in 63 percent of protected areas. And we raise the natural sound levels by 10 times in 21 percent of such landscapes.

这在噪声等级中相当于提升到了一倍到10倍。布克斯顿和她的团队判定，63%保护区内噪音翻倍的责任都要归咎于人类。我们将地球21%地区的自然音等级提高到了10倍。

“These levels are known to impact both the human experience in national parks and have a range of repercussions for wildlife…so animals use sounds for many essential life functions, such as predator avoidance, navigation, finding food, mate attraction and maintenance of social groups. So not being able to hear these sounds has serious consequences.”

“这些水平已经影响了人们在国家公园的体验，并对野生动物造成了一系列影响……动物的许多基本生命功能都需要用到声音，比如回避捕食者、导航、寻找食物、吸引伴侣以及维护社会群体。因而听不到这些声音的后果非常严重。”

The study is in the journal Science, which also provided the audio of Buxton.

这项研究连同布克斯顿的音频均发表于《科学》杂志。

“The challenge here is managing noise sources that are coming from outside the protected area…however, our paper provides some really valuable information and options for managing noise and also enhancing opportunities to enjoy natural quiet.”

“我们面临的挑战是管理来自保护区以外的噪音来源……我们的研究论文中提供了一些非常有价值的信息、管理噪音的方法选项以及增加大家享受自然宁静的机遇。”

Because it’s not just the non-human residents of wilderness areas that need some peace and quiet.

毕竟不只是荒野地区的非人类居民需要一些和平与宁静。