Magda Chudzinska

University of St Andrews

Title: Why impulsiveness of sound matters

Abstract: Pile-driving of foundations of windfarms generates high-amplitude impulsive underwater noise into the marine environment, which can result in physical or auditory injury to marine mammals. Impulsive sounds are more damaging to the mammalian ear than exposure to non-impulsive sound, as impulsive sound increases the hearing threshold faster, i.e., less sound energy is needed to induce a temporary or permanent shift in the hearing threshold (TTS or PTS) for an impulsive sound, than for a non-impulsive sound. The signal of impulsive sound sources, however, loses its impulsive characteristics as a function of distance from the source (due to propagation effects) and could potentially be characterised as non-impulsive beyond a certain distance. In this talk I would like to present the results from SMRUC led project called RADIN: Range-dependent nature of impulsive noise and discuss:

• What characterise impulsiveness of the sound and how does it change with various parameters
• Should we consider sound transition from impulsive to non-impulsive in environmental impact assessments
• What are the main drivers of animals receiving TTS/PTS.

Apologies in advance that this talk may not be very stat heavy but I promise to add at least one equation.