Plants do provide some form of noise attenuation effects, able to offer some degree of noise-reducing effects (Fan et al., 2010). Plants in the form of tree or bushes have been used in urban design to provide some form of buffer and barrier against noise pollution. Yet, I am curious about how noise pollution could impact plants themselves.
Noise Pollution and its Effects on Plants
Sound can stimulate plant growth and promote their resistance to pests (Creath and Schwartz, 2004). Some flowers only release their pollen in response to a certain pitch of bee buzzing, between 200 – 400 Hz (Buchmann, 2015).
The growth of plants and trees may also be indirectly compromised by noise pollution – research in New Mexico reports a disruption in animal dispersal caused by industrial noise (Francis et al., 2012). In observing the dispersal of pine cones in the Rattlesnake Canyon Habitat Management Area, mice preferred noisy areas, whereas Western scrub-jays avoided these areas. This could have implications for the trees as the seeds that were eaten by mice do not survive to germinate, which might lead to changes in the distribution of these pine trees decades later (Francis et al., 2012).
In 2021, scientists discovered that low-frequency sounds produced alterations in Neptune grass, a species of protected seagrass native to the Mediterranean Sea. Exposure to artificial noise also reflected an impact on the nutritional processes of the plant (Solé et al., 2021). Damage to the plant is more significant in parts of the point responsible for detecting gravity and storing energy, with starch levels inside the seagrass dropping drastically. This indicates that carbon metabolism within the plant would also change, which might have effects on the role of seagrasses in carbon sequestration (Solé et al., 2021). This new discovery also gives researchers good reason to suspect that other plants might suffer from the same trauma to noise (Braun, 2021). More research would need to be conducted in this area to discern noise effects on plants.
References
Braun, A. (2021). Noise Pollution Affects Practically Everything, Even Seagrass. [online] Hakai Magazine. Available at: https://hakaimagazine.com/news/noise-pollution-affects-practically-everything-even-seagrass/ [Accessed 12 Mar. 2022].
Buchmann, S. (2015). Pollination in the Sonoran Desert Region. In: A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert. University of California Press.
Creath, K. and Schwartz, G.E. (2004). Measuring Effects of Music, Noise, and Healing Energy Using a Seed Germination Bioassay. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 10(1), pp.113–122.
Fan, Y., Zhiyi, B., Zhujun, Z. and Jiani, L. (2010). The Investigation of Noise Attenuation by Plants and the Corresponding Noise-Reducing Spectrum. Journal of Environmental Health, [online] 72(8), pp.8–15. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/26328102 [Accessed 12 Mar. 2022].
Francis, C.D., Kleist, N.J., Ortega, C.P. and Cruz, A. (2012). Noise pollution alters ecological services: enhanced pollination and disrupted seed dispersal. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 279(1739), pp.2727–2735.
Solé, M., Lenoir, M., Durfort, M., FortuñoJ.-M., van der Schaar, M., De Vreese, S. and André, M. (2021). Seagrass Posidonia is impaired by human-generated noise. Communications Biology, [online] 4(1). Available at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-021-02165-3.pdf.