What Are the Loudest and Quietest Places in the U.S.?

That message comes in loud and clear from the National Park Service‘s new “noise map” of the United States, presented this week at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in California.

The map shows average predicted volume on a typical summer day, based on 1.5 million hours of acoustical monitoring.

New York City was the noisiest place in the country (no surprise here), and Dinosaur National Monument in Colorado was the quietest. (Shhhhh….)

The National Park Service is using the map to measure the effect of sound levels on wildlife. Interestingly, even when there are no people, the East is louder than the West, mostly because of rushing rivers and rustling plants nearby.