Visualizing Marine Soundscapes for Marine Resource Managers and the
General Public: Data Visualization Website Developed Using
Human-Centered Design Principles and Interdisciplinary Collaboration
Abstract
Understanding marine soundscapes, including the biological,
anthropogenic, and geological sounds, is essential to conserving
protected species and their habitats. However, the marine resource
managers often do not have a strong science background to interpret
complicated soundscape data to facilitate them making decisions. The
biological components of soundscapes can be useful to characterize
biodiversity and monitor the distribution and behavior of individual
species. Anthropogenic sound in the ocean is increasing and has been
recognized as a threat to marine mammals for decades. To help the marine
resource managers and the general public understand the impacts of ocean
noise, we as nine undergraduate students from different majors of study
at UC Berkeley’s Fung Fellowship Program utilized Human-Centered Design
and created an interactive marine soundscape map
(https://calsound.herokuapp.com), focusing on the California Current
Ecosystem. Based on 14 interviews we conducted with researchers,
policymakers, and environmental lobbyists, we decided to portray
spectral soundscape metrics alongside the context of animal and human
activities in a map format. We then created a digital hub to easily
visualize, analyze, and synthesize marine-sourced soundscape data. Our
website displays soundscape data over a range of spatial and temporal
scales, acoustic detections of marine mammals, species habitat models,
and anthropogenic sound source distributions as heat map layers and
graphs. The platform not only displays ocean soundscape data, but also
provides an overview of marine soundscape technology, as well as related
articles and websites. The website is designed so that users who are not
familiar with marine soundscape data, such as coastal managers and the
public, can guide themselves through a tutorial and explore on their own
to gain a better understanding of oceanographic sound. In the future, we
will add more features to the website, such as allowing users to upload
their own data to the website to visualize them online. The website will
be self-sustainable and continue to serve more people. Our website will
facilitate people to visualize and understand marine soundscapes, their
impacts and our solutions.