But that doesn't solve the noise problem, Hampton says

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Selected sounds for the Microsoft Encarta electronic multimedia encyclopedia.
He did sound design for the video games Microsoft Golf and Microsoft Train Simulator. He recorded "as realistic" sounds for them.
In 1998, the Smithsonian Institution hired Hampton to record the sounds of disappearing animals and plants in Hawaii. The recordings were included in a photo exhibit.

Then the researcher realized that there are fewer and fewer quiet places in the world. Noise also interferes with nature: it is more difficult for animals to hide from predators and find a mate. Therefore, they often leave their habitat.

Creating Quiet Parks International
In 2005, Hampton staged his first event: he traveled to the Hoh Rainforest in Washington's Olympic National Park and took with him a red rock given to him by a local tribal member. Deep in the forest, Hampton placed the rock on a log and named the spot "One Square Inch of Silence."


Gordon Hampton records sounds at Rialto Beach in Olympic National Park

He wanted to draw the attention of the National Park Service and local airlines to noise pollution in nature.

After the event that year, Mumbai-based design consultant Vikram Chauhan discovered Hampton online. Chauhan was going through a personal crisis at the time and felt truly at peace in nature, in silence.

He teamed up with a scientist to form Quiet Parks International. Chauhan became president and Hampton became secretary. As of 2021, QPI employs six people, with dozens more as freelancers.


Co-founder of Quiet Parks International Vikram Chauhan

How scientists measure silence
QPI CEO Ulf Bohman grew up in northern Sweden and learned to value silence from a young age. In the 1990s, he managed office workers and conducted team-building exercises in the wilderness. In one such exercise, some groups practiced silence for half a day.

Bohman now specializes in urban spaces for QPI: learning how noise affects parks as a whole and where quiet areas are located. To do this, he came up with a system for testing places for their level of quietness.

To officially designate an area as a “quiet park,” a lot of data needs to be collected first. Stockholm and London use online maps of road noise. Local residents can also help identify quiet areas.

Once a suitable location is found, Bohman takes a series of sound measurements. Mostly using an Extech portable sound level meter: he finds an open area, turns on the recording, and sits quietly and still for at least 15 minutes.

Locations are assigned the status of "quiet park" if:

The average noise level on the recordings is below 45 decibels — a little louder than in a library.
Short-term noise disturbances are permissible, no higher than 65 decibels - like a loud conversation in a restaurant.
Bohman clarifies that this does not mean that the entire park colombia number data has to be quiet - in an urban environment this is impossible. For example, the noise level in the Judarskogen nature reserve near Stockholm was found to be uneven in different parts. But because the average noise level is below 45 decibels, the reserve has been called a "quiet park" - the first of five in Sweden.



Scientists take measurements over several days because noise levels can vary between weekends and weekdays. Construction work in the city can also interfere with the recordings.

QPI plans to add visual, olfactory, and tactile criteria to its standards. “We always consider visual perception. You should feel like you’re in nature, and to do that, you need to remove as much of the cityscape and power lines as possible,” Bohman explains.

"Enforced silence" and noise-induced illnesses
Last year, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, people found themselves in a "forced silence": there were no planes in the sky, no cars on the roads, and photos of wild animals wandering into urban areas appeared on the Internet.


“There is no place on Earth that is free from noise pollution. Air traffic has doubled in the last 30 years and is expected to double again by 2030. Maritime traffic has quadrupled in the last 20 years. And the world’s population has doubled in my lifetime.” — Gordon Hampton.

Imperial College London tested 144,000 adults in Norway and the Netherlands and found that noise can cause health problems.