The Psychological Restoration Of Bird Song In Different Urban Spaces

The fast and high-pressure life will aggravate the mental burden of urban residents,and in the long run,it will harm both people’s physical and mental health.According to Kaplan’s attention recovery theory,environments with fascination,being away,compatibility and extent could provide a comfortable mental-resting space.As one of the indispensable elements in urban environment,birdsong have a positive impact on perception restoration.It has not been recovered that birdsong in which space could provide the maximum restoration.Therefore,this paper investigated the relationship between urban space types and bird song perception restoration to provide theoretical basis and practical methods for urban landscape planning and design which oriented by rich and diverse birdsong environment in the future,so as to improve the quality of urban habitat,relieve the spiritual pressure and bring more benefits for urban residents.This study classified the urban spaces in Xi’an city based on different land coverage as well as vegetation structure and selected 10 plots of 5 typical habitats.And the birdsong was picked,which is one of the highest restorative sound source.The methods of questionnaire and field measurement were used to investigate the birdsong perception and sound environment in sample area;the perceived restorative scale(PRS)and the perceived restorative stress scale(PRSS)was used as evaluation tool for experiments;the statistical software SPSS was used to explore the birdsong perception and restoration degree in different spaces.Finally,suggestions for birdsong perception mode of urban space planning and management to build a more restorative acoustic landscape environment were put forward.The main conclusions of the study were as follows:1.A total of 10 dominant bird species were recorded in the study area,of which the dominant bird species in the partly-open green space were the most and the bird song diversity was the highest.But in the gray space the dominant bird species and bird song were the lowest.2.The birdsong was easier to be perceived,louder,and most popular in the partly-open green space,which has high vegetation coverage and diverse structure.However,the gray space with the greater degree of manual intervention had the weakest perception.3.There was significant correlation between the objective birdsong frequency and the perceived frequency,but there was no correlation between the objective birdsong sources and the perceived birdsong sources.4.There were significant differences in the overall restoration and sound restoration among different urban spaces,which were both the highest in partly-open space,followed by blue space,and gray space has the lowest restoration.The perception of bird song had a significant positive effect on restoration,especially the perceived loudness,perceived frequency and preference.5.There were significant differences in overall satisfaction and sound satisfaction among different urban spaces,and the satisfaction of partly-open green space was the highest,followed by blue space,the gray space was the lowest.6.Based on the above results,the corresponding suggestions were put forward :(1)the landscape space of partly-open green space and blue space should be increased in the city,but the planting of single tree species in closed single-layer broad-leaved forests should be reduced,as well as the large area with high degree of manual intervention to improve the environmental recovery benefits;(2)the density and coverage of shrubs should be increased,being planted under the tree layer forests to attract more birds but not absorb too much bird song;or waterscape should be added to create water sound matching birdsong,increasing people’s perception of natural sound,so as to have a more positive influence;(3)more attentions should be paid to the division of function areas in urban space,so that people can feel more birdsong without too much interference through distinguishing the activity places of human and birds.