Listening to Yellowstone: Day 1

Yellowstone National Park's Old Faithful Inn locked its doors yesterday for the season. Beartooth Pass Highway, winding its way from the park's northeast entrance along the Wyoming-Montana border and through the Gallatin National Forest, closed as well yesterday due to snow and ice. The highway will probably open again in May when plows are finally able to clear the roads. Bull elk still bugle, though their calls are becoming less frequent as the seasons change. Grizzlies are nearing hibernation. Snow is falling. Winter is...well, you get the picture.


I decided last Thursday to write a series of posts on Yellowstone's soundscapes for this week after remembering the upcoming anniversary of Truman Everts's rescue from the Yellowstone wilderness on October 16, 1870. Everts's story is fascinating -- he survived alone and without food or supplies for 37 days, suffering immeasurable hardships along the way -- but what has always struck me when reading his account is how closely he listened to his surroundings and how that close listening allowed him to survive in the wilderness.

Over the past decade, the park has sold Yellowstone's soundscapes as a major tourist attraction in hopes of bringing more attention to the ecosystem's "acoustic health," as the Park Service calls it. In addition to the various CDs of Yellowstone's sounds (including the famous recordings made by Bernie Krause), the NPS now hosts a page dedicated to the park's soundscapes where you can hear recordings made by park rangers and local residents. Xanterra, the park's primary concessioner, even offers a "Steam, Stars and Winter Soundscapes" tour every night between December 18 and February 28.

With these developments in mind, I thought it might be interesting to think through some of the historical and current issues concerning Yellowstone's soundscapes, and how the park's acoustic health is crucial to its survival as both an ecosystem and tourist destination. One fundamental question for me is this: how does the management of the park's soundscape also manage our understandings and our expectations of how nature and wilderness ought to sound?

This first post serves as a brief, general overview of the history of soundscape studies undertaken by the National Park Service. Tomorrow, I'll discuss some of the first expeditions to the park and how early explorers heard and described the sounds of what was then called Wonderland. Like Everts, Yellowstone's early explorers often remarked on the environment's sounds, noting both the beautiful tranquility of its remoteness and the abrasive loudness of its geothermal activity. On Wednesday, I'll cover the mysterious sounds of Yellowstone Lake and the various explanations given to them by travelers over the years. Thursday, I'll delve deep into Everts's story and his attentiveness to his acoustic environment. And on Friday, I'll close with an overview of the park's winter sound management program as the Park Services attempts to balance the ecosystem's health with the increasing tourism to the park during the winter months.

A Very Brief Overview of Yellowstone and Sound Studies in National Parks

Some facts about the park:

• Established March 1, 1872. Yellowstone was the world's first national park.
• Area of Yellowstone National Park: 3472 sq. mi.
• Area of Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE): 28,125 sq. mi. The GYE extends primarily south of the park and includes all or parts of Grand Teton National Park, Beaverhead National Forest, National Forest, National Forest, Custer National Forest, Shoshone National Forest, Bridger-Teton National Forest, and the Wind River Reservation.
• Visitors: 3,188,030 (2013)
• Vehicles: 2,2026,238 (2013)

Federal interest in the nation's ecological soundscapes dates to the Noise Control Act of 1972, when congress mandated the study of noise and recommended the implementation of noise controls in businesses, national parks, and other public areas. This was followed by the National Parks Overflights Act of 1987, which regulated the flight paths and minimum altitudes of aircraft over national parks as a means towards lowering the amount of anthropogenic noise heard throughout the parks. It was not until 2001, however, that the NPS Management Policies included a entire section dedicated to the issue of acoustic environments. Today, the NPS focuses primarily on two objectives when studying ecological soundscapes: 1) the impact of anthropogenic sounds on wildlife, and 2) the impact of human-made sound on tourist experiences. 

Scientific interest in national park soundscapes increased greatly after 2000 when the Park Service began studies of Denali's acoustic environment. The findings analyzed by University of Wisconsin-Madison (Go Badgers!) graduate Davyd Betchkal revealed only 36 days over a 6-year period unmarked by the sound of combustion engines (this New York Times Magazine article on Betchkal is a lovely read). The Park Service has conducted similar studies in Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, and in Hawai'i. Soundscape studies have since become more formally organized with the consolidation of the Night Skies (established 1999) and Natural Sounds (established 2002) Programs into the Natural Sounds and Night Skies Division in 2011. 

Definitely spend a few -- or more-- minutes on the webpages for the Natural Sounds and Night Skies Division as well as on the Yellowstone Sound Library page. Lots of great information on both pages.