Abstract
The Adirondack Park (New York, USA) is a protected landscape of public and private lands that contains boreal lowland wetlands. I conducted soundscape monitoring from late May to late July 2014 to examine potential effects of human activities on boreal wetland bird communities. I compared acoustic indices derived from 2,310 hours of digital recordings across 21 boreal wetland sites on state and private lands and with varying distances to major roads. I expected sites closer to roads to have more mechanized noise (anthrophony) and diminished animal sound (biophony). Anthrophony was higher and biophony lower at sites near major roads. No differences in acoustic indices were found between broad state and private land ownership categories. No sites were immune from mechanized noise; overhead aircraft were detected at all sites. This study suggests that noise should be considered as part of Adirondack bird, wetland, and landscape conservation planning.