Are Pristine Soundscapes Important?
Soundscapes really are incredibly important to the environment. It is easy to understand and appreciate the importance of serene landscapes, clean water, and fresh air. Add to the list quiet soundscapes, and you have a complete picture. Soundscape is the term applied to the sounds that fill our environment and that most definitely affect our well-being. Compare your mood when you are on a busy sidewalk next to a noisy street to your mood when you are in the quiet woods walking on a dirt path. Even though the sounds you hear may not be registering in your conscious mind, they affect you. The same is true for animals and other habitat that also depend on natural soundscapes for survival. Although we know this to be true, it is difficult to articulate what a soundscape is and what it should be.
Everglades Betrayal - The Issue that Defeated Al Gore takes readers through the proposal to develop an airport between two national parks, Everglades National Park and Biscayne National Park. The proposal was approved and considered on its way before environmentalists employed tactics to analyze its impacts further. Key to this analysis was determining the natural soundscape in the two national parks and what changes would occur as a result of the airport. Readers of Everglades Betrayal will learn how the National Park Service and the Federal Aviation Administration disagreed on the limit of change that could occur to the soundscape before affecting visitor experiences and animal habitat.
Everglades Betrayal explains the reasoning used by both sides and details the process to arrive at the conclusion. It was a fascinating struggle between interested parties on a local, state, and national level, including the White House. Everglades Betrayal explores the subject of measuring and analyzing soundscapes and the determination of when sound becomes noise. Understanding soundscapes is an inexact and new science, but a very important one that we must learn.
The Everglades Betrayal – The Issue that Defeated Al Gore is now available to you online.
