Loss of noise attenuation

Loss of noise attenuation

Trees, hedges and other vegetation absorb and block noise between a site and its neighbours. When that buffer degrades, a site that needs it has to build barriers or accept limits on its activity. Resilience books that loss as a Business interruption loss, against revenue only.

What the map shows

Noise attenuation has no layer of its own. It is read through the natural assets ENCORE links to it:

• Today: Species: MSA Degradation (2015). Habitats: Natural habitat % — baseline 2024 (LUH3), a layer hidden from the map pickers and shown under Today.
• Projected: Species: MSA Shock layers for SSP1 and SSP3. Habitats: LUH3 Shock layers, trajectory M for SSP1 and H for SSP3. Both at 2035, 2050 and 2080. SSP2-4.5 reads the SSP3 layers.

Species and Habitats each weigh 1 in forests and woodlands, shrublands, savannas and grasslands. They weigh 0.5 in deserts, polar-alpine areas, cropland, urban areas and palustrine wetlands, and 0 in freshwater and marine biomes. ENCORE also links Water (rated Green, so weight 0) and Atmosphere (up to 0.5, read as wind and precipitation). A site spanning several biomes keeps the highest weight. At each site the service takes the most degraded supplier, after its delivery weight.

How the loss is computed

The degradation D, between 0 and 1, is the largest of (delivery weight × degradation of the natural asset) at the site. The dependency is the ENCORE rating of the site's activity, read as (rating − 1) / 4. No replacement cost is published for this service yet, so the loss is D × dependency × revenue. See Nature risks and Shock layers.

Sources

• GLOBIO 4 (PBL), Schipper et al. (2020): Mean Species Abundance. CC BY 4.0.
• Land-Use Harmonization 3 (LUH3), University of Maryland, CMIP7 (Zenodo / input4MIPs); HYDE 3.4 land-use reconstruction. LUH3: CC BY 4.0. HYDE 3.4: Licence not confirmed (CC BY 4.0 reported).
• ENCORE 2024 (Global Canopy, UNEP FI, UNEP-WCMC): delivery weights and dependency ratings. CC BY-SA 4.0.

Limits

• The Atmosphere link reads no shock today: the wind layers are hidden and no precipitation layer exists.
• LUH3 runs one model per trajectory (M is IMAGE, H is GCAM), so part of the gap between scenarios is a model gap. Trajectory M is current policies, not Paris-compatible.
• MSA never reads intact: GLOBIO's climate pressure puts the least disturbed land at about 8 % degradation.