A monthlong noise study will begin next week at the Vicksburg National Military Park.

“We’re very interested in seeing what type of effect the various noises inside and outside the park have on our visitors when they’re listening to programs or just touring through the park,” said Virginia DuBowy, natural resources program manager for the federal preserve.

Noise monitors outfitted with microphones to gauge decibel levels will be placed in four areas of the park on Monday by National Park Service personnel from the Natural Sounds Program of Fort Collins, Colo. The monitors will capture sound levels for a month, after which Natural Sounds Program will analyze the findings and present park officials with a report.

The monitors will be placed deep inside the park’s northernmost wooded area, as well as at the visitor center off Clay Street, the Cairo Museum and South Loop inside the 1,800-acre park.

In conjunction with the monitoring project, Natural Sounds Program team members will present a public program on preserving natural and cultural soundscapes in National Parks in the visitor center at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday. Admission is free.

While DuBowy said the park does not get many complaints about noise from its visitors, officials may reconsider the location of some park programs and seasonal events based on the study’s findings. In the summertime, for example, speakers and programs conducted near the visitor center are sometimes muffled by the sounds of idling busses in the parking lot.

“We may have to modify the way we do some things. Maybe our policies will change as far as what you have to do in the parking lot,” she said. “But I really don’t know at this point. We’ll have to see what the report finds.”

DuBowy said park officials requested the study from NPS last year. It will also include analysis of sounds created by cannon and arms firings as part of park interpretive programs, construction in the park, nearby train whistles, Yazoo Diversion Canal traffic and Interstate 20 traffic.

“Also, we’re looking at any effects a possible expansion of I-20 would have,” said DuBowy.

The sounds created inside and outside the park are not suspected to have any effect on the integrity of the nearly 1,400 tablets, markets and monuments placed throughout the park and city, DuBowy said. The VNMP is the city’s No. 1 visitor attraction, drawing in about 700,000 tourists from around the world in recent years. Its tour roads track Union and Confederate siege lines from 1863.