Soundscape Characteristics of an Environment: A New Ecological Indicator of Ecosystem Health

Landscape characteristics are important measures of an ecosystem’s environmental health, as they depict spatial patterns of physical attributes of the landscape that many organisms rely on. The visual features of a landscape, such as forest type, density, patch size and shape, affect habitat properties that are specific to different organisms. Change or disruption of the spatial patterns of a landscape has been shown to impact biodiversity (Crist et al., 2004, Jeanneret et al., 2003, Sala et al., 2000, Foley et al., 2005), ecological function (Allan, 2004, Alberti, 2005, Grigulis et al., 2005, Battin, 2004), and ecosystem services (Tscharntke et al., 2005, Fischer and Lindenmayer, 2007).