A new but long-simmering front has opened in the push-and-pull struggle between wind companies advocating the status quo and communities uncertain about how to deal with reports they hear from elsewhere that suggest industrial-scale wind farms have unintended consequences, including chronic noise impacts and reduced property values.

This may not be the first time it’s bubbled to the surface, but it’s the first one I’ve noticed: the Hammond, NY Town Council is considering a ordinance that would require wind farm developers to compensate property owners who see drops in their land values because of the presence of wind turbines. The proposal also requires the company to buy out any property owner who objects to living near a turbine. Iberdrola Renewables says these provisions in the rules “would eliminate any possibility” for a planned wind project in town.  Read the rest of this entry »

A few months back, I was contacted by an editor at National Geographic, asking me to fact-check a short piece they were preparing on ocean noise (the author, who I’d talked to a few times, had recommended me). The piece came out this week in print and online, and I’m pleased to say that my input turned out to be important: besides affirming a couple of factual points they were concerned about, I caught what would have been a major mistake in an editor’s attempt to shorten a section of the original text, which had seriously mangled the science behind one of the key the findings in the research they are addressing. Just another day in office here at AEI, where I’m able to respond to questions and queries from anyone needing some clarification, whether an international publication, a county commissioner trying to understand wind farms sound, or a curious individual wondering how to pursue an interest in acoustic ecology….

Read the National Geographic piece, with typically great graphics, here.

This is pretty amazing: researchers at CalTech working in biomimicry have completed the first field trials of an array of small vertical axis wind turbines, in which they pack the arrays tightly together, aiming to take advantage of possible boosts in output created by capturing the vortex flow patterns from each other.  The concept is modeled on studies of fish schools, and the realization that the move far more efficiently through the water than do individual fish.  Air pattern modeling and initial field tests suggest that these tightly packed arrays may generate 100watts per square meter, ten times the energy density of today’s industrial wind farms.  This could mean more energy in the same area, or, more likely, the same or somewhat more energy using far less land than today’s wind farms use.  With machines that are quieter and only 30 feet tall!

Energy per unit area of proposed tightly packed small turbines vs. several existing utility-scale windfarms

Each 30-foot turbine generates only around a kilowatt of output, as compared to today’s massive 1500-2500kw industrial turbines; this is the reason that all the many vertical axis designs have been considered only useful for home use, rather than utility-scale generation.  But the fish-inspired layout produced far more power per square meter of land used than today’s wind farms.  The first field test Read the rest of this entry »

Orca populations around Vancouver Island won a decisive victory in Canadian Federal Court this week, as Judge James Russell ruled that the Canadian government cannot rely on voluntary protocols and guidelines to protect orca critical habitat.  The judge brought acoustics into his decision by stressing  that critical habitat protections must include ecosystem features, including prey availability and and noise impacts.

The decision, which is detailed in this article from the Vancouver Sun, could push the Canadian government toward some difficult decisions, especially regarding salmon harvests.  Declining salmon runs are a key factor in orca declines, and there is a push to limit fishing to assure that orcas (and other wildlife) have more access to this key prey species.  In addition, research continues to suggest that shipping noise may interfere with orca communication and foraging (recent AEI post); there’s no telling how this conflict might be resolved.

A new study of property values in the vicinity of a large wind farm in Illinois provides reinforcement for both sides in the debate.  I first saw mention of the study in an American Wind Energy Association press release that touted its consistency with previous studies that found no significant price impact in homes near wind farms.  After downloading and reading through the report, I find that the results do indeed match previous studies, though in my reading the results are subtler than the overall averages suggest, just as they were with the big DOE-funded study that came out about a year ago.

The new study, entitled “Wind Farm Proximity and Property Values: A Pooled Hedonic Regression Analysis of Property Values in Central Illinois, 2010” used complex multi-factor statistical analysis to compare many factors that affect the sales price of a home (that’s lay-speak for the “pooled hedonic regression analysis with difference-in-differences estimators” that were used).  The bottom line is interesting and potentially reassuring: Read the rest of this entry »

Alec Salt, a Washington University scientist who studies the inner ear, has discovered that outer ear cells may respond to very low frequency infrasound, well below the frequencies that are audible or otherwise consciously perceptible.  Salt suggests that his discovery may help explain why some individuals seem to be more dramatically affected by low frequency wind turbine noise than would be expected.

The study, funded by the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Deafness and other Communicative Disorders, is a literature survey that looks especially at the physiological responses of guinea pigs exposed to infrasound down to 5Hz.  Humans can generally hear sounds as low as 20Hz; sounds below this frequency are called infrasound.  Guinea pigs are often used in lab studies, since their hearing mechanisms are similar to those in humans; in fact, human ears are more sensitive to low frequencies than are guinea pigs.  The crux of his findings center on the ways that hair-like cells in our ears, the Outer Hair Cells (OHCs) and Inner Hair Cells (IHCs), work together to translate sound pressure at various frequencies into the perception of sound in our brain.  For audible frequencies, the OHCs amplify the vibrations they receive from sound waves, triggering hair-like structures on the IECs to ripple and bend; it is this movement of IHCs that create the electrical (neural) impulses that our brain perceives as sound.

The surprise in Salt’s study was that OHCs also react to infrasound.  Rather than, as might be expected, simply not being affected by infrasound, OHCs are “highly sensitive” to it, Read the rest of this entry »

AEI lay summary of this recently published scientific paper (download paper):
Mann D, Hill-Cook M, Manire C, Greenhow D, Montie E, et al. (2010) Hearing Loss in Stranded Odontocete Dolphins and Whales. PLoS ONE 5(11): e13824. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0013824

This paper generated a wave of press coverage upon release, most of it suggesting that the research found that stranded dolphins are predominantly deaf, and often focusing on the idea that exposure to shipping and other ocean noise is the likely culprit.  I must admit that when I first saw the headlines, I too thought this might be the smoking gun implicating chronic ocean noise in population-scale impacts, but as usual, the popular press had vastly oversimplified and distorted the actual findings.

Baby dolphin found stranded in Uruguay, November 2010

Deafness found in a less than a quarter of stranded animals

While, as noted in some press coverage, 1200 0r more dolphins strand each year in the US, this study looked at just 35 stranded cetaceans of 8 species that stranded between 2004 and 2009.  The big headlines focused on the fact that 57% of bottlenose dolphins had profound hearing loss.  This represents 4 of 7 individuals, who were deaf or close to deaf; one was clearly very aged (it had no teeth left), so the authors suggest this individual was clearly experiencing age-related hearing loss. One other species showed hearing loss in a significant proportion of individuals studied: 5 of 14 Rough-toothed dolphins had profound hearing loss (36%); two of these are considered likely to have been born with hearing loss (see below).

By contrast, none of the 7 Risso’s dolphins studied had hearing loss, Read the rest of this entry »

The VENUS ocean observatory network is clarifying the degree to which waters around Vancouver Island are infused with the shipping noise.  The data is reinforcing concerns that local orcas and other sea creatures are likely to experience several negative impacts, including chronic stress, the need to use more energy to talk louder, and perhaps interference in foraging. A good article in the Vancouver Island-based Times-Courier (excerpted below) details the findings.

“The noise is virtually continuous during daylight hours and quietens a little bit overnight,” Richard Dewey, associate research director on the University of Victoria’s VENUS (Victoria Experimental Network Under the Sea) project, said. “In addition to the annoyance of the constant din, [the whales] are likely to have to shout over the engine sounds and listen through the racket to pick out and identify the messages.” Tricky tasks, such as the use of broadband clicks to echo-locate fish — the sole diet for resident killer whales — is likely to be extremely difficult when boats and ships are nearby, Dewey said.

It was expected the Strait of Georgia would be noisy as it is one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, but among recent changes is the increase in massive container freighters. “They travel at twice the speed that vessels used to travel at, they use four times as much energy and make four times as much noise in the ocean,” Dewey said.

One of the — as yet unanswered — research questions is whether the whales can survive increasing noise at the same time as they are coping with shrinking salmon runs and climate change. “Whether the whales and dolphins can adapt is an open question,” Dewey said.

Learn more at the VENUS website.

I just came across this fascinating article from the Martha’s Vineyard Times that discusses a recent trip by local residents and planners up to Maine to participate in a Sustainable Island Living conference sponsored by the Island Institute, which catalyzed the construction of the controversial wind farm on Vinalhaven.

The entire article is well worth reading, but I’ll highlight these two thoughtful comments from experienced local planners after they visited the Vinalhaven turbines:

Bill Veno, senior planner for the Martha’s Vineyard Commission, talked to some Vinalhaven residents about their concerns, and noted, “Something that strikes me is that the way communities have traditionally looked at noise and have a noise limit with decibels, that tool wasn’t really designed for the type of noise that seems to be involved with wind turbines. Because it’s not really the decibels so much, and it’s not exactly a pure tone situation, and so we’re really trying as a society to figure out where that appropriate level is.”

Veno’s wife Aubyn noted that “When we were at the site, it sounded to me like airplanes flying overhead. But then we stopped at the bus driver’s house, who lived about three-quarters of a mile away, and got out of the bus and listened from there, and it sounded really just like ocean waves do in the distance from our house on the Vineyard.” (Ed. note: this confirms that the turbines are indeed audible, even at three-quarters of a mile; if your rural home does not, in fact, have ocean waves or a constant road noise in the distance, the turbines will be a new sonic presence.)

Nick  Puner, a former Westchester County planning member now living on Martha’s Vineyard, said, “The Vinalhaven turbines dominate the landscape, and they’re awesome. They’re not ugly, but they’re right on top of everything. I definitely think it’s a mixed bag.”  He also felt that the sound was very close to that of the background noise that day, though clearly audible: “I didn’t think it was that dramatic, but on the other hand, I don’t dismiss that somebody could be seriously upset by the constancy of it,” he said. “One person’s music is another person’s noise.”

Two of the “hot button” wind farms of 2010 are headed into the new year with continuing local rancor, despite conciliatory talk from authorities in each town when neighbors began to raise noise issues a year ago.

In Vinalhaven, Maine, where three turbines went online in October 2009, providing power for the local electric co-op, the State Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has agreed with neighbors that the turbines are exceeding state noise limits at times (see this detailed Bangor Daily News article and this recent OpEd by a neighbor)

Fox Islands Windfarm, Vinalhaven (courtesy Bangor Daily News)

The DEP ruled that recordings paid for by local residents suggest the turbines are “likely to exceed” night time noise limits of 45dB when the wind speed is higher at the top of the turbines than the bottom; the recordings found noise levels up to 47dB.  George Baker, CEO of Fox Island Wind, the local LLC formed to build the turbines, notes that FIW’s noise consultant “absolutely doesn’t agree” with the finding, suggesting that ambient noise contributions to the overall sound mean that the turbines themselves are operating at just under the acceptable noise limit.  The DEP gave FIW until January to submit an operational plan that will slow the turbines when wind conditions match those during the recordings.

Baker contends that the conditions are rare, and occur only in summer.  However, many locals have reported Read the rest of this entry »

The State of Oregon has begun an assessment of possible health effects experienced by wind farm neighbors.  The state Public Health Division held “listening sessions” in three communities over the past few days, to hear from citizens.  “With any development, you start learning more about potential concerns as more people start experiencing it,” said Sajata Joshi, an epidemiologist for the state. “Our goal now is to hear what people have to say, and see if we can find solutions that work for communities and for the state’s goals.”

UPDATE: Check out this comprehensive article on the Oregon health impact assessments and wind turbine noise in general, published in early 2011.

While the Health Impact Assessment will “use the best available science to evaluate public health risks,” the Oregon process is also including anecdotal reports from neighbors, such as those received in these listening sessions.  A limitation of most previous state and industry-funded health impact reports has been that they considered only “direct, causal” impacts: that is, their focus was narrowed to studying previous research to address the narrow question of whether the sound levels being experienced can directly cause physiological symptoms to appear.  It is very likely that many of the reports of health problems, such as headaches, dizziness, and the like are indirect effects of sleep disruption or stress caused by moderate levels of audible wind farm noise at relatively close ranges, and it’s promising that Oregon is taking into account the actual experiences of wind farm neighbors who have been affected.

Jae Douglas, Oregon Public Health’s moderator, said the most frequent wind-farm concern she’s heard is about stress. Her office is charged with writing an assessment of any health impacts from turbines for consideration by the siting council, Oregon Department of Energy and county commissions — agencies that make the decisions on wind-energy projects. A draft will come in March and the final assessment in June.  You can stay current on the process at this Oregon DHS website.

The International Association of Oil and Gas Producers (OGP) has re-instated its Decommissioning Committee, in light of the fact that many of the over 5000 offshore oil rigs are nearing the end of their operating life.  A UK Decommissioning Conference was held in October, and during 2011 the OGP Committee “aims to establish programmes to study the environmental consequences of decommissioning and examine technology development, best practices and benchmarking.”

Certainly, given today’s increasing awareness of the effects of noise on marine life, it’s likely that environmental assessments of decommissioning activities will include consideration of their acoustic impacts.  Most likely, increased noise will be relatively short-duration (in the scale of weeks or months); in regions where multiple decommissioning projects are underway at once, there may need to be consideration of the cumulative impacts.

In the October issue of the OGP newsletter, the reinstatement of the Decommissioning Committee was noted as follows: Read the rest of this entry »

A month or so ago, new research by Aran Moody at Woods Hole was published and garnered a bit of press attention — perhaps largely because it involved squid, whose public fan base rivals that of their more “charismatic” brethren, the whales and dolphins.  I’ve been meaning to post about it, but didn’t get to it.

Just as well, because today, Canada’s MacLean’s magazine blogs the story just right, offering the best mix of science and why it matters that I’ve seen.  The key points are that squid appear more sensitive to low-frequency sounds or pressure waves (such as that perhaps preceding the approach of a whale, rather than the echolocation clicks of dolphins), and this could mean that shipping or seismic surveys may displace squid.  There’s also a chance that invasive squid species, such as the Humboldt squid decimating fisheries along the northeast Pacific coast, could be chased away with noise (oh, joy!).  Check out the full post at MacLeans here.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service is going back to the table to write a new EA or EIS to assess the impacts of exploratory oil and gas wells in the Baca National Wildlife Refuge in southern Colorado.  After initial approvals were derailed by a lawsuit and injunction that stressed the noise impacts of drilling at Great Sand Dunes National Park, the FWS settled the lawsuit in September by withdrawing its previous approvals and agreeing to more comprehensive environmental studies.  Wasting no time, the scoping meetings for the new EA or EIS took place in late October, and scoping comments are being accepted until November 10, after which FWS will begin writing a new EA; if significant impacts are found, an EIS will be produced. A pdf version of the FWS Powerpoint at the public meeting can be viewed online. Drilling operations at each of the two sites would last for 90 days; if the exploratory wells find significant potential for commercial development, further environmental analysis would precede any future activity on the Refuge.

Baca National Wildlife Refuge

The Baca NWR was established in 2003 and is not yet open to the public; a “conceptual management plan” was released in 2005; the lack of a completed management plan was part of the reason that the earlier drilling was challenged.

In September, the Arizona Game and Fish Department released a noise study for a proposed shooting range on a site that lies 1-3 miles from the boundary of Walnut Canyon National Monument, east of Flagstaff. The results have spurred the Superintendent of Walnut Canyon to express concerns to the Game and Fish Department about the effects of the noise on visitors and wildlife, in the hopes that planned berming and other noise mitigation measures at the facility can reduce noise to the point that it is inaudible in key areas.

The Foster Ranch Shooting Range site was purchased last year after a 16-year effort to find a suitable location for a state-run range in Northern Arizona; previous sites fell victim to local resistance or grazing leases that were still active.  The noise study found that shooting was audible, but well within state noise limits, at all locations monitored, which included a nearby residence, random sites a mile away, and one site at Walnut Canyon, 3 miles from the range (download pdf of study). At Walnut Canyon, gunshot noise ranged up to 52dB, Read the rest of this entry »

Irv Teibel passed away on Oct. 28 in Austin, TX. He was 72, and died of cancer that was diagnosed only a couple weeks before his death.  Irv first opened my ears to our living soundscapes in around 1972, when as a teenager I purchased two of his Environments LPs. He released this series under the banner of Syntonic Research Inc. between 1970 and 1979. The series ignited a worldwide interest in field recordings  and was an initial entry into the world of carefully recorded natural sounds for both listeners and later recordists. Irv’s family has created a page on the Caring Bridge website that explains the circumstances of his final years, as well as providing a space for folks to leave remembrances.

The Environments series (see detailed Wikipedia entry) featured a simple, classic format, with side-long tracks that allowed deep experiences of one particular soundscape.  The most popular titles included The Ultimate Thunderstorm (recorded from a balcony in the city!) and the The Psychologically Ultimate Seashore (in which he manipulated recordings from the beach to more closely imitate the auditory experience of being there). These, while not unlike later relaxation-oriented productions, were more primarily respected due to their immersive, high fidelity sonic standards.  The series also explored some themes that were more experimental, often pairing one side of natural soundscape with a flip side of featuring themes such as a Central Park “Be-in”, electronic bell sounds,  and a chorus chanting “om.”  (Perhaps these did not sell so well, as the series was limited to natural soundscapes during its final few releases.)

Irv’s work was a precursor to much of what EarthEar and modern environmental sound artists have done, combining state of the art field recording with careful and sensitive studio composition.  There’s no doubting that the Environments series, which garnered widespread press coverage and appreciation, was the foundation for all later efforts to create and market compelling field recordings to the general public.  For many of us who have continued to care about the health of acoustic habitats and who revel in the complexity and diversity of natural soundscapes, Irv’s work was an aesthetic entry point that affirmed our own passions for listening and honoring the natural world’s rich voice.

Thanks, Irv.  We were listening!

Irv Teibel, 1938-2010

I was pleased to be able to attend the 8th Wind and Wildlife Research Meeting, which took place in Denver from October 19-21.  Sponsored by the National Wind Coordinating Collaborative, this event brings together folks from agencies, the academic research community, some NGOs, and the wind industry.  The major focus is direct impacts on wildlife, including bat and bird strikes and habitat disruptions (see this recap of the meeting from NWCC, and view or download most presentations and posters here). This year, for the first time, noise had a place at the table, with an oral presentation by one of the lead researcher on the recent breakthrough National Park Service research into animal listening areas (see this AEInews post), and a poster by yours truly, embedded below.

In conversations with participants, there was a lot of interest in the emerging fact that even moderate noise levels can have a dramatic effect on animals nearby.  I stressed the point that while noise may rarely be a primary factor in animal impacts, the increased stress caused by dealing with elevated noise levels can often create synergistic effects that amplify the effects of other known impacts.

My detailed poster introduced what is known about individual variability to noise within animal populations, summarized some impacts of moderate noise on wildlife, explained noise levels around wind farms, and suggested several situations in which noise impacts on a more-sensitive subset of the local population could be a factor in wind farm impact planning (click image to view on SlideShare, or click full screen to view larger):

Zion National Park has become the first of its brethren to adopt a formal Soundscape Management Plan, the culmination of three years of work.  For the first time, soundscape measurement metrics that have been in development at the NPS Natural Sounds Program office in Ft. Collins, Colorado, will be driving forces in ongoing Park management and assessment procedures.  One of these metrics is the “noise-free interval,” or average time between the audible presence of human sound.  According to Frank Turina, an NPS Natural Sound Program planner, “Now it’s two to three minutes before you hear a human-caused sound, usually involving an overflight, and we want to expand that to a seven-minute period. If we meet that goal we will reassess the situation to see if a longer interval is warranted.”

While some environmental groups had pushed for the Park Service to set a higher standard for back country visitors, this first step, if successful, would effectively reduce sound intrusions to less than half their current level.  And the fact is, even this first step will depend on cooperation from the Federal Aviation Administration, which has so far been slow to take on the necessary shared responsibility for National Park overflight issues.

In more active areas of the Park, such as around visitor centers and within the first mile of trailheads, where the vast majority of visitors spend their time, the goal is to reduce noise by changing some Park staff and maintenance procedures. For example, the use of leafblowers may be reduced in favor of rakes, and new vehicles will be assessed for possible noise-reduction systems.  “Surveys have shown that 90 percent of people who visit the national parks want natural quiet and to be able to hear the sounds of nature,” said Kezia Nielson, who worked on the plan. “They cannot have that experience with human-caused sound.”

For more, see this article in the Salt Lake Tribune, or visit the NPS Natural Sounds Program website.

I’ve been way lax in posting about my trip to Cork, Ireland for the 2nd International Effects of Noise on Aquatic Life conference, which took place in mid-August.  It was such a treat to take part in this gathering of nearly 250 ocean scientists and regulators, leavened with a sprinkling of NGO folks.  It was a rare chance for me to actually talk face to face with people who read and circulate AEI’s reports and web content; among the surprises was that German regulators read me as regularly as do their American counterparts, and that the Navy’s marine mammal environmental compliance program is a hotbed of longhairs, in contrast to the toe-the-cultural-line conformity many of us have adopted over the years—bravo!

For now, I wanted to at least get my presentation up here and available to those interested.  The main theme is that there appears to be a spectrum of individual noise sensitivity, with about 20% being very sensitive to any new noise, 50% largely tolerant of most noise, and 30% in between, responding as the noise gets louder or more intrusive.  My initial idea was to share some of this research on humans, and to hear from humans living near windfarms, as a typically “out of the box” AEI approach to exploring questions about why we see such a wide range of responses from marine mammals to ocean noise.  But as I prepared the presentation, it began to appear to that there are some fairly compelling indications that this spectrum of noise sensitivity may in fact be a cross-species phenomenon, with many studies of animal disruptions seeming to peak at about half the population being affected.  Time will tell whether this is true, and if so, what the implications are.  I’m going to continue to explore this theme at a National Wind Coordinating Committee meeting on wind farms and wildlife in October.

Here I am giving the Cork presentation:

You can view the Powerpoint here, or click on the link and see it on the Slide Share site, where you can view it larger, or download it.

A research team that has been recording whale calls for the past nine years in the Gulf of Mexico has deployed six pop-up recorders in the same area, in hopes of hearing how the local whales are doing in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

This blog post from Greenpeace summarizes the past and current research in areas 9 and 23 miles from the site of the accident.  The post notes the lack of recent whale sitings in the area (though one was seen at a site 63 miles away).  I’m not sure what a lack of whales at sites close to the explosion and spill would prove or imply: while the Gulf sperm whales are a resident population, they do range over a region, rather than a neighborhood, and it would be rather surprising if they had lingered near the site of both oil and massive amounts of ship traffic over the past few months.  Still, it’s great that there is a baseline of acoustic data for this area, and we’ll certainly look forward to results from this and future years’ studies there.

Two interesting though not quite definitive (see update at bottom) news reports came across my desk in the past couple of weeks, both of which signal a potentially dramatic shift away from developing new land-based wind farms in Europe.  The Energy Minister of the new UK coalition government as well as the CEO of the Danish government-owned energy company both made public statements suggesting that they will be looking away from further development of wind farms on land, in response to increasing public resistance.

In the UK, the Conservative Party reflected the concerns of their largely rural constituency and had expressed far more doubts about large-scale onshore wind farms than had the Labour Party.  While Labour’s Energy secretary Ed Miliband said opposing wind farms is “socially unacceptable”, adding society should view people who blocked planning applications in the same light as drivers who refused to wear a seatbelt, the new Energy Minister Lord Marland said in early August that the “future for this country” in terms of wind energy lies in offshore schemes rather than land-band developments that have sparked anger in Westcountry rural and coastal communities.  While about 70% of the wind farm project approved by the former government are under construction,  Marland stressed that “It is our determination that there should be no dramatic increase in this (wind farms approved by Labour) and that the emphasis should be offshore, where the supply of wind is much more reliable. There are of course constraints in the environment… and fishing and shipping communities need to be listened to, but offshore is the future for this country.”  Perhaps most strikingly, the new coalition government plans to abandon a controversial set of local and regional renewable energy targets, which had been driving much of the new wind farm permitting. For more, see this article.

And in early September, a short online article from Denmark quoted Anders Eldrup, the CEO of Dong Energy, as saying, “It is very difficult to get the public’s acceptance if the turbines are built close to residential buildings, and therefore we are now looking at maritime options.”  According to this article, which appeared on the Copenhagen Post website, it had been Dong and the government’s plan that 500 large turbines be built on land over the coming 10 years, as part of a large-scale national energy plan. This plan has hit a serious stumbling block, though, due to many protests, and the firm has now given up building any more wind farms on land.  I have been unable to find any other references to this shift in the online media (UPDATE, 9/12: see this fairly long article in the Telegraph, repeating the quote in more definitive terms, and highlighting Danish anti-wind sentiment) and likewise no public mention of it on Dong’s website; apparently some in the Danish Parliament were unhappy with the idea, so it remains to be seen whether this reflects the CEO’s opinion or substantial new policy.  In recent months, a rising tide of protests has appeared in Scandinavia, long at the forefront of wind energy development; this article looks at some of the new resistance.
UPDATE 10/27/10: Dong says the original press coverage was “grossly misinterpreted”: This much more detailed article notes that Dong has built no new onshore windfarms in Denmark for 5 years, largely due to the fact that the country already has the highest number of wind turbines per capita in the Europe, so is not now “exiting” online development. The article also downplays the extent of public opposition, and stresses that looking offshore just makes more sense in terms of generating capacity.  Dong continues to install land-based turbines in other Scandinavian countries, and is actively pursuing three repowering projects in Denmark (repowering is an upgrade in which aging smaller turbines already in place are replaced by new, larger models, thus generating more power from existing windfarms).

This month’s Renewable Energy World podcasts focuses on a question that AEI has been focusing on for the past couple of years: When is wind energy noise pollution?  The short online article summarizes a roughly half-hour audio program that centers on three interviews: one with a Texas rancher, one with a couple in Vinalhaven, Maine, and one with yours truly.  Intereviewer and Renewable Energy World editor Stephen Lacey did a very good job framing the issue, stressing that while wind energy has great potential for good, it is clearly industrial development and deserves honest scrutiny in terms of its impacts.  My part of the conversation begins at about 17:30 and lasts for about eight minutes.

Check out the story and podcast here on the Renewable Energy World website.

From August 15-20, 250 ocean noise researchers, agency staff, and NGOs gathered in Cork, Ireland for the 2nd International Effects of Noise on Aquatic Life conference.  I’ll be posting more on the confab later, but for today I wanted to note the quick jump made by two of the folks I was most glad to finally meet, each of whom headed directly out into the field upon their return home from Cork.  Their field blogs certainly remind me that their lives are VERY different than mine, where the post-conference field work involves garden beds burgeoning with beets, carrots, tomatoes, and basil, along with today’s excursion to town, where I write from a shaded cafe table looking up at the Sangre de Cristos in full autumn sun.

After leaving Cork, Sarah Dolman touched down only briefly in Edinburgh before heading off to the beautifully foreboding Outer Hebrides, the islands off the country’s northwest shore, where her team is based on the island of Harris and Lewis. The research task at hand is a simple population survey, though in the North Atlantic, it’s often not so simple!  The team is posting entertaining recaps of their days on the water (and sometimes limited to cliff-top surveys from shore) at the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society field blog.  Lots of great pictures and tales!

Meanwhile, Brandon Southall is basking in relative comfort along the Southern California coast, where the main meteorological challenge has been morning fog.  He’s leading the most extensive Controlled Exposure Experiment (CEE) yet undertaken, and is posting daily on his SEAblog.  Alternatively known as a Behavioral Response Study, the study aims to place temporary acoustic tags on several species of whales, in order to track their responses to various sounds, which are projected in a controlled way into the water near the tagged whales. The tags record the actual received level of sounds, while also tracking the animals dive patterns and vocalizations.  While the project descriptions do not specify the sounds being played, earlier studies have used mid-freqency active sonar sounds, as well as the sounds of predators (orcas), and various artificial sounds; the experiment protocol starts sounds at 160dB, increasing gradually to 210dB re 1uPa, and limits sound exposure to 30 minutes, with long pre- and post-exposure periods that should clarify which behaviors are clearly in response to the sounds.  This 6-week project builds on earlier work done on a Naval range in the Bahamas, during Hawaiian Naval exercises, and last summer in the Mediterranean; while these earlier studies focused primarily on very hard to tag beaked and pilot whales, the current study is focusing largely on much more numerous and easier to approach larger whales.  Between August 22 and the August 30, they managed to deploy 29 tags and do 14 sound exposures with individuals of three species; by the conclusion of the project on October 1, SOCAL-10 will have a far more robust data set of behavioral responses to sound exposures than has ever been available before.

Attaching two tags to a blue whale (Photo courtesy J. Calambokidis, Cascadia Research)

For more on the SOCAL-10 study, see the SEAblog daily reports, plus:
This 18-page pdf summary of the project, including a good overview of the results of previous CEEs
Brandon’s Vimeo page, currently featuring 6 videos, including an hour-long introduction to the project  (again, including slides of data from previous CEEs)and a series of short videos from the field, including one of a tag being placed.

In Puget Sound, the vulnerable population of 85 resident orcas face a daily onslaught of boat noise, from fishermen, commercial whale watching, and recreational watercraft.  Current voluntary guidelines call for boats to remain 100 yards away, and to slow to seven knots when within 400 yards.  “People don’t always grasp what 100 yards is,” said Kari Koski, program director for Soundwatch, a project of the local Friday Harbor Whale Museum. “We try to educate them and give boaters the opportunity to make the right decision.” Soundwatch teams that flag down boaters who are too close, or going too fast, find that many local boaters are unaware of the voluntary guidelines, or simply don’t notice the whales nearby.  An article this week in the Seattle Times provides a great overview of the on-water education undertaken by Soundwatch, as well as NOAA’s plans for more stringent mandatory rules, which are planned to go into effect next year.  NOAA’s proposal calls for 200 yard limits, as well as setting aside the entire west side of San Juan Island as a “no-go” zone for all boats, including kayaks, out to a half mile from shore.  The proposal was released in 2009, with comments accepted into early 2010, and a final decision expected sometime soon.  See this earlier AIEnews post for more on the proposal, and reactions from locals; this earlier post looks at some of the research underway to assess the effects of boat noise on orca communication (it makes them call louder) and foraging (it may cause them to expend more energy finding food).

David Abram, whose widely acclaimed first book, The Spell of the Sensuous, addressed the mixed legacy of the written word in our culture, has released a new one, Becoming Animal, which draws on another decade of deep experience with the human and more-than-human world.  While the first book was his Ph.D. project, and veered deeply into academic phenomenology in an effort to contribute some fresh ideas in that field, the new one is much more rooted in David’s stellar storytelling voice.  David’s always been a strong advocate for my work with acoustic ecology, as his vision has much in common with our intention to listen more clearly to the voices around us.

Learn more about Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology on David’s Alliance for Wild Ethics website; there are a few short videos there as well, providing a quick taste of his uniquely engaged mind and heart.