Integrating soundscape assessments into landscape planning from the perspective of ecosystem services: concept, methodology, and application

verfasst von

Zhu Chen

betreut von

Christina von Haaren

Abstract

Land use conditions and needs are changing in different countries and regions. Emphasizing the value of nature to human beings and socio-economic development, the analysis and assessment of ecosystem service (ES) state and values as well as their changes are of imminent significance in this context, and therefore should be the main focuses in landscape planning and environmental impact studies. Cultural ecosystem services (CES), as an essential category of the relevant ES, are becoming increasingly important in contemporary societies, while facing the problem of their continued loss and poor substitutability. This makes CES a necessarily high priority in spatial planning. Natural soundscape characteristics provided by natural sounds in the ecosystems are an indispensable segment of CES, and unarguably one determinant of landscape aesthetic values and human nature-based experience. They are meaningful for the environmental quality and human well-being, and therefore, should be considered in landscape planning and environmental impact assessments. To date, such natural soundscape characteristics are still being neglected in the planning system. Although landscape planning has long considered landscape aesthetics, the natural soundscape attributes have neither been seen as a portion of landscape aesthetic quality nor incorporated into environmental impact assessments. The disturbing noise is the solely acoustic aspect during the relevant assessment procedures. An applicable methodology is still missing for assessing natural soundscapes on the landscape or even higher scale within the context of landscape planning. Such flaws hinder capturing the offered and utilized natural soundscape values in ecosystems, and comprehensively projecting changes in the landscape aesthetic quality (incl., natural soundscape characteristics) caused by sound-related factors in landscapes. For instance, the deployment of wind turbines or traffic transformation would generate new noise that may impair the landscape aesthetic quality, especially the sound-related components, and thus decrease the capacity of recreational ecosystem services (RES) in the region. Embedding soundscape concepts and evaluations into landscape planning from the perspective of ecosystem service assessments is useful for filling the mentioned gaps. Landscape planning incorporates the evaluation of all types of ESs and projects their possible changes, offering references to environmental impact assessments, and deducing objectives and measures for maintaining and restoring the landscape quality. The ES assessment at landscape or even higher levels is normally an essential step to understanding the ecosystem potential for offering the specific ES types in landscape planning. To achieve this, the user-independent assessment approach using the general public’s preferences for certain landscape characteristics is needed and effective. The intersubjective landscape preferences refer to a core of common landscape preferences that can be deduced from basic research concerning people’s perception and appreciation of landscapes and legal regulations (‘societal will’). Such an assessment usually manifests as an under-complex model and is dependent on easily derived spatial information based on the Geographic Information System (GIS). It can effectively derive spatially explicit and comparable results of ES values and impairments under uncertainty, which can usefully inform the priorities of actions and define the domains of public participation. Thus, it is ideal that the natural soundscape assessment in landscape planning employs the user-independent methodology as an appropriate starting point. The user-independent assessment and modeling approach of natural soundscape capacity should consider the core of common soundscape preferences, which can be derived from previous studies on people’s perceptions and preferences for certain soundscape characteristics. This approach should be not only easily transferred and reproduced but also flexible to be modified, supplemented, and improved. Its results allow for spatial comparisons between different regions to inform plan-, decision-, or policy-making. The results can also be utilized to project the possible changes in the soundscape capacity caused by pressures, which influence the landscape aesthetic quality or recreational ecosystem services capacity eventually. This thesis aims to incorporate soundscape concepts and evaluations into landscape planning based on the framework of ES assessment, by providing novel insight and approach to the assessments of natural soundscape characteristics and changes at planning- and policy-relevant levels. It focuses on the CES provided by natural soundscape characteristics, which is closely related to landscape aesthetic quality and recreational experience. It can also improve the consideration of the acoustic environmental features in landscape planning and impact assessments. Thus, the main objective of this thesis is achieved following three guiding objectives: (i) to synthesize existing knowledge and evidence that are applicable for deducing people’s general preferences for certain soundscape features, (ii) to develop a methodology for spatially assessing and mapping natural soundscape quality, and (iii) to explore the impacts of sound composition changes on the natural soundscape perception and its benefits to landscape aesthetic quality. The first aim lays the foundation of evaluation criteria and indicator systems for the assessment methodology and identifies which aspects are still insufficient. The second objective contributes to developing the prototype of a modeling methodology for landscape planning, using the user-independent approach with the findings from the first work. The third aim strives to provide empirical evidence to support the model application in detecting possible changes in soundscape and landscape in environmental impact assessments. To this end, the thesis first proposed a planning-oriented soundscape evaluation framework, which conceptually integrates soundscape knowledge into landscape planning based on a practical ecosystem service evaluation model. This framework inherently has the potential to be applied within the widely used Driving Forces, Pressures, State, Impacts, and Responses (DPSIR) model. It was then used to guide a systematic review of a vast amount of literature. This review synthesized applicable knowledge and evidence in terms of people’s common preferences for specific soundscape characteristics and a series of usable indicators. The synthesized existing evidence was sufficient to identify the general public’s perception and preferences of acoustic amenities and soundscape characteristics from nature, supporting the construction of the preliminary evaluation criteria. However, the explicit knowledge concerning the impacts of landscape changes, especially bird biodiversity and planning projects with possible noise issues, on the natural soundscape benefits remained largely unclear. Subsequently, a user-independent modeling methodology for spatially explicit assessment of natural soundscape quality was developed and examined. This methodology provides a natural soundscape quality index (indicator-based model) constructed by adopting the findings of the first work and making necessary supplements. As a preliminary indicator-based model, this index currently includes the three prevalent natural sound types that are birdsong, water sound, and vegetation sound. It evaluates natural soundscape quality as a capacity provided by the ecosystem, but not necessarily the value presented at a certain moment. Accordingly, for quantifying the birdsong-related indicators, the model considers the occurrence and offered value of the birdsongs from all potential passerine bird species within the ecosystem. The evaluation criteria and results align with the public’s common soundscape perception and preferences. The developed model was then implemented in a case study area in Springe municipality, Germany, to spatially evaluate and map the natural soundscape capacity on a supralocal scale. The spatial data of habitat types was used to spatially locate the natural sound sources. The comparability and communicability were exhibited in the assessment results among different given areas. This natural soundscape quality index is easily transferable and repeatable and therefore can be applied at various planning and management scales, which allows the soundscape assessment to be implementable at the planning level. The third core part of this thesis provides empirical evidence regarding the impact of different sound compositions on the public’s evaluations of soundscape and landscape qualities, helping to supplement the aspect of soundscape impact assessment of the literature-based evaluation in the developed model. This part also investigates the differences in people’s evaluations due to demographic characteristics. The results can contribute to the completeness of soundscape assessment methodology in landscape planning, by understanding the pressure-specific sensitivity of the state values of soundscapes and landscapes of the general public and specific user groups. They are also helpful to the projection of changes in the values of natural soundscapes and landscape aesthetic quality caused by certain factors, such as different types of birdsongs and noise issues, in landscape planning and environmental impact assessment. The limited influence of demographic characteristics on the evaluations can reflect the commonality of the public’s sensitivity to sound-related elements in the environment from a different angle. Still, the several identified differences in the evaluations among different user groups can also inform the preparation of public participation and proposed measures in planning and decision-making. More studies are still necessary in the future to provide empirical evidence for the relevant topics, which will comprise the foundation for deducing the public’s common values of the sensitivity to different pressures that may influence the states of soundscape and landscape. This thesis advances the knowledge of the soundscape assessment targeted at landscape planning and environmental impact studies, which opens up an avenue particularly for planning-oriented soundscape studies, and fills the missing dimension within the realm of landscape aesthetic assessment. The core work of this thesis proposes a novel insight for understanding soundscape components in the framework of ecosystem service evaluation, develops a user-independent methodology for being able to spatially assess natural soundscape quality at the planning level, and provides empirical evidence for supplementing the knowledge of soundscape sensitivity to specific pressures to complete relevant environmental impact assessments. The study results can provide useful information and added value for policy-, plan-, and decision-making in terms of supporting the measures or responses to changes in soundscapes and landscapes, communicating soundscape values trade-offs between different planning goals and options, and facilitating public participation in soundscape issues. Overall, the work of this thesis has laid a good start and guidance for integrating soundscape assessments into landscape planning and environmental impact studies from concept to application.

Organisationseinheit(en)

Institut für Umweltplanung

Typ

Dissertation

Anzahl der Seiten

68

Publikationsdatum

06.05.2025

Publikationsstatus

Veröffentlicht

Ziele für nachhaltige Entwicklung

SDG 8 – Anständige Arbeitsbedingungen und wirtschaftliches Wachstum, SDG 15 – Lebensraum Land

Elektronische Version(en)

https://doi.org/10.15488/19010 (Zugang: Offen)