Review article

Coastal Environment Alterations and Sensory Landscape

Lidija Runko Luttenberger orcid.org/0000-0002-4011-0605 ; University of Rijeka, School of Polytechnics, Sveučilišna avenija 4, 51000, Rijeka, Croatia *
Ivia Ančić orcid.org/0000-0002-1887-6604 ; University of Rijeka, School of Polytechnics, Sveučilišna avenija 4, 51000, Rijeka, Croatia

* Corresponding author.

Abstract

Coastal environment, its natural world, and humans, are besides climate change effects subject to
significant pressures by maritime-related, tourism, energy, aquaculture, and other sectors, all resulting
in chemical pollution of all environmental components, noise pollution, and visual pollution. Humans
attempt to adapt, mainly through devising and applying technological solutions. The senses incorporate
the environment into the body and there is a mismatch between the way senses evolved and present
surroundings, causing the disruption of visual acuity, smell, taste, and hearing. The disruptions to
sensory landscape have thus altered the relationships between the organisms and the environment. The
perceptual world or ‘umwelt’ differs for each organism. The impacts of environmental alterations to
sensory landscape disrupt human sensory functioning, resulting in health impacts. Habitat disturbance
in aquatic environments caused by acidification, contaminants, noise, optical degradation, elevated
temperature, and electromagnetic fields can severely impact animal sensory biology. The paper focuses
on sensory system responses of both humans and the wildlife to anthropogenically-induced and climate
changes, reviews the issues resulting therefrom, and proposes solutions.

Keywords

coastal environment, sensory landscape, senses, climate change, pollution

Hrčak ID:

317130

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/317130

Publication date:

16.5.2024.

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