River Noise

The river environment is quite unique in that it may have extremely low background or ambient noise and so any introduced noise is considerably higher and thus can cause considerable disturbance. Migrating species of fish are of main concern in rivers, as the noise may prevent them from travelling to their spawning sites and from reproducing.

There are many different sources of noise during construction that can cause noise disturbance, like tunneling, drilling, boring, and particularly piling. Impact piling produces huge amounts of impulsive noise and vibro-piling creates noise and vibrational disturbance. Subacoustech have developed instrumentation to measure vibration on the river bed during construction. There is no requirement for vibrational measurement as yet, but it is expected to be incorporated in monitoring regimes in the near future. We are the only consultancy known at the time of writing who can perform vibrational monitoring.

Please contact us to discuss any river environment monitoring requirements you may have.