Project Description: Motor vessels, such as those that bring 99% of visitors to Glacier Bay National Park, introduce noise pollution into the air and underwater. Vessel noise can interfere with visitor enjoyment of wilderness, disturb wildlife, and inhibit underwater communication among whales and other marine life. Park managers need to be able to predict where and when vessel noise may reach
levels that are of concern in either the above-water or underwater domain. Our goal is to create a manager-friendly model for the evaluation of vessel noise scenarios in coastal parks. The need for a dual-domain model was originally raised in the 2018 Glacier Bay Acoustic Resource Management Framework.
The first objective toward achieving this goal is to gather data on in-air and underwater vessel noise emissions and how they change with operational factors such as speed and orientation with respect to a listener. Glacier Bay National Park & Preserve (GBNPP) first needs to quantify above- and below-water sound levels of commercial and recreational vessels. This requires
measurement of terrestrial and aquatic absolute sound pressure levels of particular vessels and other sound sources at various locations throughout the park on calibrated or well-characterized recording devices. This objective will require a focused field effort to document noise emissions
for a variety of predominant vessel types, ranging from cruise ships to ‘six-pack’ charter boats. This would be done by conducting controlled noise-measurement trials, and by leveraging existing airborne and underwater sound datasets and vessel tracks with acoustic propagation models to estimate each vessel’s noise emissions.
The second objective is to develop sophisticated sound propagation models relating the characteristics of various sound sources to the resultant sound field throughout the park.
The third objective is to create a manager-friendly desktop application that allows Park staff to create scenarios with different vessels, locations, and other characteristics, and see in-air and underwater sound propagation models with user-friendly displays of the results.
Lead Principal Investigator: Dr. Aaron Rice, Cornell University
Partner Institution: Cornell University
Federal Agency: National Park Service
Federal Agency Technical Contact: Alexandra Gulick
Start Year: 2024
End Year: 2027
Initial Funding Amount: $440,537.00
Federal Grant Number: P24AC00464
Products Associated with this Project:
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