Members of the MARCIS team recently presented their research at the CWW held in Šibenik, Croatia.
CWW is an international conference which brings together researchers, wind industry professionals, policy makers and NGO representatives to share knowledge and develop solutions for reducing the impacts to wildlife from onshore and offshore wind farms. This year the conference focused on nature inclusive upscaling of wind energy, with a lot of discussion about how we can use wind energy to meet climate targets whilst still conserving biodiversity.
Lila Buckingham (MARCIS postdoc) presented the novel agent-based model that WP3 have been developing, which simulates non-breeding season movement, behaviour and energetics of individual seabirds. Lila illustrated the model by using the proposed Trollvind offshore wind farm to assess collision risk for black-legged kittiwakes and displacement risk for common guillemots, using one population of each species as a case study. Lila’s research found that black-legged kittiwakes breeding at Ålesund have a high risk of overlap with the proposed wind farm, but a low risk of collision, as the planned rotor sweep zone is higher than an average kittiwake’s flight height. The model predicted that 6% of common guillemots breeding at Sklinna would be displaced by Trollvind offshore wind farm. Although this led to minimal mass change at the population level, there are likely to be some individual-level effects. Read more about how Lila is using agent-based models as a tool to predict the impacts of stressors on individual seabirds in this MARCIS post and the NINA report on the Trollvind case study.
The pathways by which seabirds can be impacted by offshore wind farms
Emma Critchley (MARCIS postdoc) presented results from the life-cycle impact assessment (LCIA) of offshore wind energy development on migrating bird diversity in the MARCIS area. Life-cycle impact assessments are tools used to model the potential environmental impact per unit of a stressor, for instance the impact of bird collisions or disturbance per kWh produced in an offshore wind farm. An LCIA was applied to distributions of migrating birds in the MARCIS area, modelled using ring recovery data from Norway and countries surrounding the North Sea basin. Emma’s research found that collision, disturbance, and barrier effects for existing wind farm developments have the greatest impact on migrating waterfowl, raptors, gulls, waders, and seabird species in the MARCIS area. Overall disturbance and barrier effects were higher than collision effects for most migrating groups. You can read more about how avian radar technology is used to assess the potential impacts of offshore wind farms to seabirds and migrating birds in Emma’s previous MARCIS post.
Estimated cumulative impacts (PDF = loss of bird diversity) to migratory bird groups from offshore wind farms in the North Sea per impact pathway.
Frank Hanssen (MARCIS WP5 co-leader) presented an overview of the ConSite Wind web-app developed by NINA which aims to inform the balancing of socio-ecological and economic trade-offs in spatial planning of wind power projects. The web-app predicts and visualises spatial consequences of different wind power decision scenarios and enables developers, authorities, and the public to take more informed and transparent decisions for future wind power developments. You can read more about the ConSite project here.
Roel May (MARCIS WP2 leader) presented his research on a transdisciplinary framework for holistic wind energy development through energy stewardship. Successful uptake and upscaling of wind energy development requires societal support for the technology, acceptance regarding the socio-ecological siting of this technology in the landscape as well as the implementation of mitigation measures. The energy stewardship concept aims to build social relational values and connectedness with the development process, which can also support sustainable development of wind energy. He also co-presented the opening keynote of the conference and co-hosted a workshop on dealing with uncertainty in the assessment of impacts.
Members of the MARCIS team were also co-authors on several other presentations and posters at the conference. The abstracts for all presentation can be found on the CWW website.