Spatio-temporal changes of road traffic noise pollution at ecoregional scale.

Noise pollution is a pervasive factor that increasingly threatens natural resources and human health worldwide. In particular, large-scale changes in road networks have driven shifts in the acoustic environment of rural landscapes during the past few decades. Using sampling plots from the Spanish Landscape Monitoring System (SISPARES), 16 km2 each, we modelled the spatio-temporal changes in road traffic noise pollution in Ecoregion 1 of Spain (approximately 66,000 km2). We selected a study period that was characterised by significant changes in the size of the road network and the vehicle fleet (i.e. between 1995 and 2014) and used standard and validated acoustic computation methods for environmental noise modelling (i.e. European Directive, 2002/49/EC) within sampling plots. We then applied a multiple linear regression to expand noise modelling throughout the whole of Ecoregion 1. Our results showed that the noise level increased by 1.7 dB(A) in average per decade in approximately 65% of the territory, decreased by 1.3 dB(A) per decade in about 33%, and remained unchanged in 2%. This suggests that road traffic noise pollution levels may not grow homogeneously in large geographical areas, maybe due to the concentration of large fast traffic flows on modern motorways connecting towns. Our research exemplifies how landscape monitoring systems such as cost-effective approaches may play an important role when assessing spatio-temporal patterns and the impact of anthropogenic noise pollution at large geographical scales, and even more so in a global context of constricted resources and limited availability of historical data on traffic and environmental noise monitoring.

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Iglesias-Merchán C. Laborda-Somolinos R. González-Ávila S. y Elena-Rosselló R. Spatio-temporal changes of road traffic noise pollution at ecoregional scale. Elsevier, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2021.117291

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Retrieved: 18 Jan 2025 15:16:06
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Resource type Text
Date of creation 2024-12-02
Date of last revision 2025-01-18
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Metadata identifier 062da6e6-7480-5a6a-8092-c035846bd4a4
Metadata language Spanish
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ISO 19115 topic category biota
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Name of the dataset creator Iglesias-Merchán, C., Laborda-Somolinos, R., González-Ávila, S. y Elena-Rosselló, R.
Name of the dataset editor Elsevier
Other identifier DOI: 10.1016/j.envpol.2021.117291
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