Large-scale manipulation of the acoustic environment can alter the abundance of breeding birds: evidence from a phantom natural gas field

1. Altered animal distributions are a consequence of human expansion and development. Anthropogenic noise can be an important predictor of abundance declines near human infrastructure, yet more information is needed to understand noise impacts at the spatial and temporal scales necessary to alter populations.
2. Energy development and associated anthropogenic noise are globally pervasive, and expanding. For example, 600,000 new natural gas wells have been drilled across central North America in less than twenty years.
3. We experimentally broadcast energy sector noise (recordings of compressor engines) in Southwest Idaho (USA). We placed arrays of speakers creating a \"phantom natural gas field\" in a large-scale experiment, and tested the effects of noise alone on breeding songbird abundance. To examine variation in human-caused noise, we broadcast two types of compressor noise, one with a slightly higher sound intensity and greater bandwidth than the other.
4. Our phantom natural gas...