A new study is the first in any
animal to link noise pollution to stress and show that this connection can
disrupt reproduction.
PUBLISHED JANUARY 8, 2018
Deserts are
commonly thought of as remote and quiet places. Travel to New
Mexico's San Juan Basin, for instance, and you might expect to hear
little more than a hot wind whispering through the juniper and piñon pine.
However, a boom in oil and gas
activity has transformed the soundscape of this region. Now, depending on how
close you are to a well pad or a compressor engine, the desert can resemble the
din of a busy office. Or worse. (Get
involved with National Geographic's Year of the Bird.)
“Some of the loudest sites can be
associated with standing on the tarmac at an airport,” says Clinton
Francis, an ecologist at California Polytechnic State University. (Listen to what a compressor
station sounds like.)
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