Noise Levels in Islesboro, ME | Find Quiet Neighborhoods With Our Sound Map
45 dBA
Average noise across Islesboro
Quiet suburban street at night
14
Residents above the EPA 55 dBA threshold
3% of Islesboro residents
61 dBA
Loudest residential point
Busy restaurant
This map shows modeled outdoor noise across Islesboro at 100-meter resolution, combining road, aviation, and rail sources. Green areas measure below 45 dBA. Orange and red exceed the EPA's 55 dBA outdoor threshold linked to long-term health effects. Use the layer toggles to view each source on its own or all together.
Overall
Road
Rail
Aviation
Click the map to explore
35 dBa55 dBa (EPA limit)90+ dBa
3545557090
Quietest (dBA)Loudest
Colorblind friendlyoff
What the numbers sound like
30 dBAWhisper
40 dBASoft rainfall
45 dBAQuiet suburban street at night
50 dBAQuiet office
55 dBAEPA outdoor threshold: light traffic 100 ft away
60 dBANormal conversation an arm's length away
65 dBABusy restaurant
70 dBAHighway traffic 50 ft away
80 dBACity bus interior
Population Above the EPA Outdoor Threshold
The EPA's 55 dBA outdoor reference level is a common benchmark for residential noise exposure, especially for activity interference, annoyance, and long-term community noise concerns. About 14 Islesboro residents, or 2.8%, live above that level. By land area, 1.8% of Islesboro is above 55 dBA.
Northern Islesboro sounds about 0% louder than Southern Islesboro to the human ear, a 0.0 dBA gap. Every 10 dBA roughly doubles perceived loudness. Within any of these directions, two homes a quarter mile apart can still differ by 10 or more dBA depending on how close they sit to a major highway.
-->
Loudest Road Corridors
The model evaluates every road in Islesboro using federal traffic counts, posted speeds, heavy-truck ratios, and pavement type. The source level shown is the modeled noise at the road centerline, where it is loudest. Noise drops with distance, faster in vegetated areas and slower over open pavement.
RoadTypeAvg. source dBAPeak source dBA
Rd Inv 27 03173Local55.055
Rd Inv 27 03157Local55.055
Rd Inv 27 03146Local55.055
Rd Inv 27 03110Minor collector53.053
How far back from Rd Inv 27 03173 do you need to be?
Rd Inv 27 03173 produces an estimated 55 dBA at its loudest centerline points. Noise drops logarithmically with distance, with the exact rate depending on what's between you and the road. Tree cover, walls, terrain, and pavement type all matter. At roughly a quarter mile back, traffic fades into the noise level of a soft rainfall.
At source
55 dBA
Quiet office to normal conversation
165 ft
42 dBA
Quiet suburban street at night
330 ft
35 dBA
Soft rainfall
660 ft
35 dBA
Soft rainfall
¼ mile
35 dBA
Soft rainfall
½ mile
35 dBA
Soft rainfall
Calculated from the model's calibrated attenuation formula. About 49% of Islesboro sits under tree canopy (heavier than most cities) and roughly 3% is impervious surface like pavement and rooftops. Both are folded into the per-place decay rate above. Heavier canopy pulls noise down faster with distance; impervious surfaces slow the drop.
How Noise Is Distributed Across Islesboro
The bar chart below shows the share of Islesboro residents in each noise band. About 100% of residents live below the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, and roughly 0% live in blocks above 60 dBA. Long-term exposure in that range is linked to elevated stress hormones and cardiovascular risk.
How Islesboro Compares
Islesboro sits the highest among the peer group. Below: how Islesboro's average outdoor noise and share of residents above the EPA threshold compare with Sargentville, Slab City, Brooks, and Brooksville.
Average noise level (dBA)
Islesboro's 45.1 dBA pop-weighted average is the highest among the peer group. Maine as a whole averages 48.0 dBA and the U.S. averages 52.0 dBA. Both are lower than Islesboro because most of either area is rural land away from major roads.
Share of residents above 55 dBA
About 2.8% of Islesboro residents live in blocks where outdoor levels exceed the EPA's 55 dBA threshold. That's in the middle of its peer group. Measured by land area instead, 1.8% of Islesboro's footprint sits above 55 dBA, against a Maine average of 17.5% and a national average of 28.1%.
What This Means if You're Moving to Islesboro
Distance from highways matters more than the neighborhood name. Two homes in the same zip code can differ by 20 dBA if one sits 100 meters from Rd Inv 27 03173 and the other 500 meters away. The model captures this at 100-meter resolution, so noise exposure changes block by block.
Tree canopy can help reduce modeled noise exposure. Roughly 49% of Islesboro is under tree cover (heavier than most cities), and the dominant land cover is evergreen forest. Both are measured from federal USDA Forest Service and USGS satellite imagery at 30-meter resolution. Streets with 60% or higher canopy show 3 to 5 dBA lower noise than comparable streets with bare ground or pavement, which is why the per-place decay rate above already accounts for it.
Sources & Methodology
The BestNeighborhood noise model is calibrated against nearly one million federal ground-truth measurements across four states. Road noise is computed from segment-level federal traffic data and propagated outward using physics-based acoustic decay, with attenuation rates that depend on the surrounding land cover.
All inputs are published federal datasets. Block-level noise is computed by combining road, rail, and aviation sound sources in the energy domain, the same physics used in professional environmental noise assessments. Read the full methodology.
