Land Art Park Significantly Reduces Jet Engine Noise Near Airport

ClockEndGooner writes: A study conducted by the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research found that low frequency and long wavelength jet engine droning noise was significantly reduced in the fall after farmers plowed their fields near Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport. The remaining furrows "had multiple ridges to absorb the sound waves, deflected the sound and muted the noise." This led to the development of the Buitenschot Land Art Park, a buffer park featuring "land art" that has significantly reduced aircraft noise without requiring cuts in the number of allowed flights in and out of the airport. The land art park has also provided neighbors with additional recreational paths and sports fields in the same space.

Comments

What a shocker

[smooth wombat]

Who would have thought having trees, shrubs and other natural barriers between an airport and the people would reduce noise levels?

It's as if clear cutting was found not to work.

Re:What a shocker

[Qzukk]

The real shock here is all that prime real estate has been just thrown away when it could have been used to build houses to sell to suckers who then sue the airport for being loud and ruining their enjoyment of their home.

Re:What a shocker

[Anonymous Coward]

You must not have even read the summary, that's impressive even for Slashdot! the geometry of the landscape is what caused the reduction in noise, not the fields on top of it. Actually, the clear cutting is what resulted in the better sound quality, due to the ridges formed in the ground after the fields were harvested. also, for future reference, while trees and shrubs help, they offer far less acoustical blockage than most people expect. the more you know.

Re:What a shocker

[timrod]

The newsworthy part isn't that they constructed noise-reducing landscape around an airport, but that they did it in a way that is palatable to the general public and reduced noise levels significantly. If you read the article, the point is that the same principle could be applied in the United States to reduce airport noise, as an alternative to having fewer flights, which would impact things like airline ticket prices and flight availability.

The real newsworthy part is that you can get the NIMBY crowd to stop complaining if you dress up things like berms as a public park and "land art" rather than "We're going to build some six-foot-high mounds of dirt to reduce the noise coming from the airport".

Re:What a shocker

[Anonymous Coward]

8 weeks later, noise complains about hoards of dirt bikes on new 10 foot berms!

Re:What a shocker

[Dutch Gun]

Welcome to my corner of the world, where a number of homeowners are complaining about the noise from a naval base that's been in continuous use since WWII. Of course, all of them signed a disclosure form saying "yes, I know I'm buying a home under the flight path of a military base".

Re:What a shocker

[mc6809e]

Who would have thought having trees, shrubs and other natural barriers between an airport and the people would reduce noise levels?

It's as if clear cutting was found not to work.

Who thinks that? People that have never studied noise abatement and think their cleverness is enough to allow them to intuit the science.

Trees and shrubs do very little. A thorough study from the state of Virginia showed

No matter how the sites were examined, there was no measurable difference in road noise. All differences at the more distant measurement locations were due simply to the distance effect rather than to any additional mitigating effects of trees, whether measured by planting density, age, height, or average tree diameter.

Re:What a shocker

[wonkey_monkey]

Who would have thought the story has nothing to do with trees or shrubs? Anyone who read it, for a start...

Prior Art - Wedge Acoustic Panels

[Irate Engineer]

Wedge foam acoustic panels have been around a long time in sound studios. It's cool that they have rediscovered the idea in dirt and are building the idea into landscape art.

Re:Prior Art - Wedge Acoustic Panels

[Irate Engineer]

Looking to score the next Score:5, Funny

Then stop making Score: 5, Insightful comments!

Dammit, I knew I was going about it all wrong.

Neighbours

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I just need to build a series of six foot high mounds between me and my neighbour.

Re:sourceforge significantly reduces crapware

[mrchaotica]

Stories about that have been getting submitted over and over again since at least yesterday. Dice (which owns both Sourceforge and Slashdot) is suppressing them.

Re:sourceforge significantly reduces crapware

[Coren22]

Here is a link to one of the submissions, it gives links to numerous other "news" site's coverage.

http://slashdot.org/submission...

I however will not speak to the veracity of the claims, as I have not looked into it personally. I also highly doubt that Dice is suppressing coverage of the issue, I expect the articles just aren't being voted onto the front page.

Re:sourceforge significantly reduces crapware

[aardvarkjoe]

Another reason is that it is not news worthy,

An organization that was formerly one of the major hubs of open-source and free software has hijacked the downloads of a major free software project, and is using that to push malware to their users. Do you seriously think that's non-newsworthy, especially to the Slashdot readership? WTF, do you work for Dice too?

or not even true.

Several of the submitted stories have been fairly well-sourced, and I haven't seen anything to suggest that they aren't true.

A Quiet Airport?!?

[Sir_Eptishous]

This kind of
pinko-commie-"feel-good"-new-agey-yoga-euro-"we support diversity"-SJW-enviro-whacko-unAmerican-antiFreedom-"GrEEN"-"compost-lovin"-"prius-Drivin"-Obama-votin-quiche-eatin-Kale-growin Bullshit will never fly in this here YouNitedStates of Merkica!
No seree! We loves em airports loud as F#$K!
We want that noise, that white noise, blasting into our every fiber, shredding any semblance of calm, any remote chance at a quiet backyard bbq without the sound of Jim coming back from his business trip to El Paso.

How about some numbers

[ChrisMaple]

How much is noise reduced, at what frequencies, under what conditions?

Re:sourceforge significantly reduces crapware

[fustakrakich]

Isn't this like... old shit? Are people asking for dupes now?

Re:sourceforge significantly reduces crapware

[fustakrakich]

Okay, You all can stop now.. I, for one, don't need to read the same old stories and hear the same old comments over and over. Let's talk about baseball! How 'bout them Cubs?