Exploring visualization techniques to enhance and inform soundscape analysis

Anthropogenic impact on soundscape dynamics is complex and often highly specific to the environment under investigation. As a result, rigorous qualitative and quantitative analyses are required to contextualize temporal, spatial, and spectral changes. As part of a multidisciplinary effort to study the acoustic characteristics of a deep-water multibeam echosounder and its impact on the local soundscape, continuous acoustic recordings were collected from an array of 89 seafloor mounted hydrophones off the coast of San Clemente, California during multibeam surveys in the area from January 4–8, 2017 and January 3–6, 2019. These datasets were used to calculate soundscape metrics including sound pressure level, sound exposure level, and decidecade band levels covering [50 Hz–48 kHz]. The remarkable density and resolution of these multi-receiver datasets posed significant and specific processing and display challenges with respect to understanding the micro- and macro-changes within the soundscape. This work presents several visualization approaches designed to exploit strong human visual perceptions skills to better understand changes in soundscape metrics, and to help quickly identify spatial/temporal periods for further quantitative analysis. Visualizations tracking the evolution of soundscape metrics through time, space, and frequency are presented here, illustrating their utility towards soundscape analysis.