5. Conclusion
Many studies have demonstrated the negative impact of noise pollution
on animal acoustic communication, aswell as revealing the negative
impact on species diversity, richness and abundance. Nevertheless, studies
into the impact of technophony on the biophony in terrestrial
soundscapes in tropical environments are still lacking. Here, it has been
shown that sound pollution fromopen-cast mining activities has a significant
impact on the biophonical soundscape of a neighboring tropical forest.
Differences found in soundscape complexity were probably related
to lower species richness at the site close to themine, changes in animal
community composition, spectral characteristics of calls between the
two sites, and possible animal adaptive responses to noise. Given that
open-cast mining is a major global economic activity, which frequently
occurs in natural areas, these results demonstrate the need for its noise
impact to be taken into consideration during the evaluation of conservation
andmanagement strategies of natural areas close to mining activity.
Alongside this, data are provided to highlight the importance of establishing
laws and regulations tomonitor and control noise close to natural
areas.