Characterizing Soundscapes on the US West Coast

Since 2018, the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS), along with the US Navy and the National Oceanographic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have co-managed a 3-year program that characterizes soundscapes within NOAA-managed National Marine Sanctuaries (NMS). Using passive acoustic recording systems, this program measures and describes comparable soundscape qualities in seven sanctuaries and one Marine National Monument within the US National Marine Sanctuary (NMS) System. NPS is responsible for the west coast regional effort and works in collaboration with Channel Islands NMS, Monterey Bay NMS and Olympic Coast NMS. This research effort serves to support both NOAA and the Navy to protect and further understand acoustic habitats within the boundaries of these protected areas.

As part of this research, NPS must holistically sample the soundscape to reflect the specific sampling needs (in space, time, and frequency) of each monitored sanctuary, including anthropogenic sound sources, natural abiotic sound sources, and biological sound sources relevant to each site. This involves metrics used to characterize and compare soundscape components among each site. These acoustic metrics will integrate with other available data and characterize habitat conditions and species presence, as well as human activity levels, in proximity to recording locations. Characterizing these soundscapes is a multi-step process: a) acoustic data collection, b) analyzing the data and its quality and c) interpreting the results.  The first year has primarily been focused on collection of initial data sets.  The second and third years will continue collecting the data times series and will commence data analysis, interpretation and report generation based on the results.

 The contractor will be required to analyze soundscape data and interpret the information that will assist the project team in providing resource managers science-based knowledge on impacts to the sanctuaries and guidance on which to make decisions on their usage and protective measures.