Sounds: Managing the Transient

Sounds: Managing the Transient
Damon Joyce – Physical Scientist Natural Sounds Program Natural Resource Program Center Fort Collins, CO

Natural Sounds Program Mission “…to protect, maintain, or restore acoustical environments throughout the National Park System. We fulfill this mission by working in partnership with parks and others to increase scientific and public understanding of the value and character of soundscapes” 2006 NPS Management Policy (4.9) The Service will restore to the natural condition wherever possible those park soundscapes that have become degraded by unnatural sounds (noise), and will protect natural soundscapesfrom unacceptable impacts.

Sequoia & Kings Canyon N.P.

Yosemite National Park

Current Data Monitoring Protocol Collection period of 25 days per season (usually summer and winter) Continuous 1-second sound pressure level (SPL) data for overall sound level and 33 different frequencies 1-second local wind speed measurements (direction, temperature, and humidity if possible) Continuous MP3 audio for entire collection period

Current Data Monitoring Protocol Collection period of 25 days per season (usually summer and winter) Continuous 1-second sound pressure level (SPL) data for overall sound level and 33 different frequencies 1-second local wind speed measurements (direction, temperature, and humidity if possible) Continuous MP3 audio for entire collection period 0.5Gb of binary SPL data, 32Gb of audio

SPL v. Frequency

Data Extent NSP responds to TARs, and this summer we are scheduled to collect data at 29 sites To date, NSP has over 7Tb of data stored on local drives, corresponding to 5 years of collection Many parks are starting up their own soundscape program (LAME, MORA, NOCA, GRCA, BRCA, DENA, YOSE, YELL, and GRTE already have programs in place) Data rates could be as high as 4-6Tb per year when all parks are taken into account

Continuous Audio — Limitations Continuous audio accounts for 99% of data storage (600 hours of MP3 audio consumes ~32Gb disk space) Cannot be further compressed Not practical to make available to public through any existing datastore Data exists in 256Mb blocks (6.2hr blocks at 96kbps) No simple way to efficiently query samples within blocks Historic data was sample-based only (10s/2min)

SPL Data — Limitations Outdated interagency text-based data format 1-second data of questionable use to datastore users Historic data in multiple formats, with multiple metrics, using multiple standards

Continuous Audio — Solutions Instituted a standard naming convention (SITE_YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS.mp3) based on recording start time Created a utility to easily extract subsections of MP3 audio Parallel file structure Lots and lots of hard drives

SPL Data — Solutions Draft database designed by the Volpe Transportation Center (DOT) Report the relevant Several levels of metrics, depending on quality and scale of data Automated method for calculation of metrics

Continuous Audio — Unresolved Database of references? Looming data storage problem, as parks collect data faster than storage capacities can handle Compress historic audio samples?

SPL Data — Unresolved How to handle data from 3rd parties not following official protocol? To what extent do we want to make data public?

Questions?

Sounds: Managing the Transient