Ocean Soundscape Atlas

**DESCRIPTION:**

The Ocean Soundscape Atlas is an interactive online tool for viewing maps of the different components of ocean soundscapes: geophony (sounds of geophysical origin such as winds and waves), biophony (sounds emitted by animal species such as whales) and anthropophony (sounds from human activities such as maritime traffic).

This application makes it possible to browse, in 3D space and time, the interactions between acoustic components and the potential impacts on marine species, especially those at risk. It is used in particular to make vertical sections along user-defined trajectories as well as to extract statistics on predefined or user-defined areas of interest.

**CONTEXT:**

The Ocean Soundscape Atlas is the result of a long-term collaboration between the underwater acoustics research teams of the Maurice-Lamontagne Institute, Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) and the Institute of Marine Sciences (Ismer) within the “DFO Research Chair in Marine Acoustics Applied to Ecosystem and Marine Mammal Research at Ismer”. This initiative begins with pioneering work on maritime traffic noise (Simard et al. 2010), underwater ambient noise (Kinda et al. 2013), and the impact of shipping noise on marine mammals (Gervaise et al. 2012). It then continues with the development of a fully probabilistic approach to assess the impact of maritime traffic noise on marine ecosystems including modeling (Gervaise et al. 2015), in situ measurement of levels at the source. vessels according to ASA / ISO international standards (Simard et al. 2016), and acoustic impacts on ecosystems (Aulanier et al. 2016, 2017). This work results in a map production tool, called RAMDAM, that will serve as the foundation for the Ocean Soundscape Atlas. Between 2017 and 2021, the Atlas of Acoustic Oceanic Landscapes project is funded by the Canadian Fund for Innovation, the Government of Quebec and Fisheries and Ocean Canada as part of the "Cyberinfrastructure Initiative, First Challenge - Infrastructure of research data ”. The MERIDIAN project (Marine Environmental Research Infrastructure for Data Integration and Application Network), submitted by a pan-Canadian consortium of universities and industrial partners, has a mandate to assist the scientific community in marine sciences in order to develop innovative tools. using Compute Canada's cyberinfrastructure, with the objective of managing, discovering, accessing, visualizing and analyzing massive data in underwater acoustics; like the millions of maps of the Ocean Soundscape Atlas. This initiative benefited over the same period from a regional synergy in underwater acoustics, in particular thanks to its complementarity with the Oceans Protection Program - Marine Environment Quality, Fisheries and Oceans Canada and the participation of the Global Observatory of the Saint-Laurent at the forefront of oceanographic data management and diffusion in Canada.

**REFERENCES:** 

Simard, Y., Lepage, R., & Gervaise, C. (2010). Anthropogenic sound exposure of marine mammals from seaways: Estimates for Lower St. Lawrence Seaway, eastern Canada. Applied Acoustics, 71(11), 1093-1098.

Gervaise, C., Simard, Y., Roy, N., Kinda, B., & Menard, N. (2012). Shipping noise in whale habitat: Characteristics, sources, budget, and impact on belugas in Saguenay–St. Lawrence Marine Park hub. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 132(1), 76-89.

Kinda, B,  G., Simard, Y., Gervaise, C., Mars, J. I., & Fortier, L. (2013). Under-ice ambient noise in Eastern Beaufort Sea, Canadian Arctic, and its relation to environmental forcing. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 134(1), 77-87.

Gervaise, C., Aulanier, F., Simard, Y., & Roy, N. (2015). Mapping probability of shipping sound exposure level. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 137(6), EL429-EL435.

Aulanier, F., Simard, Y., Roy, N., Gervaise, C., & Bandet, M. (2016). Spatial-temporal exposure of blue whale habitats to shipping noise in St. Lawrence system. Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Science Advisory Secretatiat Research Document. 2016/090, vi + 26 p.

Simard, Y., Roy, N., Gervaise, C., & Giard, S. (2016). Analysis and modeling of 255 source levels of merchant ships from an acoustic observatory along St. Lawrence Seaway. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 140(3), 2002-2018.

Aulanier, F., Simard, Y., Roy, N., Bandet, M., and Gervaise, C. (2016). "Groundtruthed probabilistic shipping noise modeling and mapping: Application to blue whale habitat in the Gulf of St. Lawrence," Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics 27, 070006.

Aulanier, F., Simard, Y., Roy, N., Gervaise, C., & Bandet, M. (2017). Effects of shipping on marine acoustic habitats in Canadian Arctic estimated via probabilistic modeling and mapping. Marine Pollution Bulletin, 125(1-2), 115-131.

**TERMS OF USE AND RESPONSABILITY:**

This is a prototype display platform for products derived from underwater acoustic models and measurements. The data displayed are preliminary results produced for scientific research, incompletely validated by measurements and by peers. The interpretation of its maps therefore requires a critical judgment by an expert in underwater acoustic modeling and measurements. The use of the data displayed for impact study or scientific research is prohibited. The distribution and reproduction of screen displays without the agreement of those responsible for the Meridian Soundscape Atlas project is not authorized. The broadcasters reject any responsibility for the possible use of these visualizations for any purpose. Contains information licensed under the Open Government License - Canada.

Organization: St. Lawrence Global Observatory