Soundscape ecology has sometimes been considered interchangeable with acoustic ecology

Acoustic ecology

Acoustic ecology, sometimes called ecoacoustics or soundscape studies, is the relationship, mediated through sound, between living beings and their environment. Acoustic ecology studies started in the late 1960s with R. Murray Schafer and his team at Simon Fraser University as part of the World...

, but it has a different and distinctive meaning, according to a small group of researchers at Purdue. The term has been use for decades in acoustic ecology, and comes from the founding work of Barry Truax and R. Murray Schafer. Soundscape ecology as a component of landscape ecology still falls under the broader interdisciplinary focus of acoustic ecology, and can perhaps be best seen as a logical and scientifically-focused extension of soundscape studies, which was founded by Schafer.