Investigation of effects of time of day and season on soundscapes in a wind farm

Wind farms are often built in rural areas, on industrial sites or on the outskirts of urban areas. Therefore, wind farms often become part of soundscapes previously characterised by bio- and geophonic sounds. While the sound characteristics of wind turbines do not change much and only depend on a few environmental parameters, biophonic and anthrophonic sounds vary greatly depending on the time of day or season. A series of soundwalks from December 2021 to October 2022 was used to investigate whether these fluctuations in the proportionate noise sources can be registered via soundwalks and how this may affect the evaluation of the soundscapes in the wind farm. A total of 95 participants took part in 13 soundwalks, distributed over the four seasons and two different times of day. As expected, the main sounds observed in the wind farm were noise from the wind turbines, natural noise, and traffic noise from a nearby motorway. Depending on the time of day and season, different dominance of noise types can be observed in the different soundscapes.