The soundscape ecology: A new frontier of landscape research and its application to island and coastal systems

Islands and mainland coastal ranges are fragile systems rich in biological endemisms and ecological peculiarities. In these environments, the cultural heritage that represents an important component of the overall ecological complexity is under attack from human pressures (urban sprawl, logistics, fish farming and mass tourism). Among the most valuable resources pertaining to these environments, the overall emerging sounds (the soundscape) play a relevant role with respect to the maintenance of the sense of a place and its cultural value. The study of the soundscape requires an epistemology based mainly on the cognitive landscape perspective, and within this theoretical framework, the General Theory of Resources, the Eco-field hypothesis and the soundtope model are also important components. Among the methods used in soundscape ecology, the analysis of the frequency bins of the acoustic spectrogram can provide proxies for understanding and interpreting acoustic patterns and processes in action across a landscape. The description of a case-study from a Tyrrhenian coastal system of Northern Italy, via the use of dedicated software and metrics, briefly illustrates the potential of soundscape ecology, which is entirely suitable for achieving a better understanding of the dynamics of island and mainland coastal systems.