Do wind turbines impact plant community properties in mountain region?

Abstract

The emergence of renewable energy infrastructures calls for a better understanding of their impact on biodiversity. The aim of the present study was to investigate in a mountain region the impact of a wind turbine on plant communities in their vicinity. A field survey was conducted in a wind farm situated in the Southern Romanian Carpathians, five years after the turbines were installed. We tested for the effects of the presence of the turbine and the distance to the turbine on plant species richness, on five plant ecological indicators and on the quality of the pastures. Overall, 33 plant species belonging to 16 families were recorded, and among them 21 were recorded in both the presence and the absence of wind turbine. The presence of a turbine did not affect the structure of the plant community, as the majority of the plots exhibited similar plant species richness and composition. Finally, the values of the ecological indicators and the pasture quality were not altered by the presence of the turbine. Such analyses could be extended over longer time periods so as to capture potential long-term effects and by integrating other environmental factors such as microclimatic conditions or soil properties.

Localized Eco-Climatic Impacts of Onshore Wind Farms: A Review

“…In situ data monitoring is one of the most accurate and reliable measurement methods, and the results of factors such as near-surface temperature, turbulence intensity, air humidity, soil temperature, wind speed, and others on the impacts of onshore wind farms on local climate indicators can be obtained by monitoring them over long time spans (Smith et al, 2013; Rajewski et al, 2014; Armstrong et al, 2016; Gao et al, 2020; Xia et al, 2022). In addition, on-site data monitoring can be used to obtain statistics on community and species changes, such as the mortality of bats, birds, and other animals, and the growth of vegetation in the local area (Barrios and Rodriguez, 2004; Arnett et al, 2008; Ma et al, 2019; Pătru-Stupariu et al, 2019; Xu et al, 2019; Liu et al, 2020; Urziceanu et al, 2021; Ferrer et al, 2022; Zhang et al, 2022). However, in situ data monitoring tools are limited by factors such as complex field conditions and monitoring time, making it more difficult to obtain long-term continuous observation data, which poses a challenge to parameterization-based studies.…”

“…There are relatively few studies on the effects of onshore wind farms on plant communities and functions, and their conclusions vary widely. In mountainous areas, onshore wind farms have little or no effect on the five indicators of species richness and composition of plant communities, and onshore wind farms do not affect the structure of plant communities (Pătru-Stupariu et al, 2019). In desert areas, onshore wind farms significantly improve the ecosystem functioning of the whole vegetation community due to a significant influence on the local microclimate, especially on the precipitation factor, which leads to a better physiological state of the individual plants in the wind farms, with shorter and denser plants and better cover conditions (Xu et al, 2019).…”

Local-scale impact of wind energy farms on rare, endemic, and threatened plant species

“…For instance, Măntoiu et al (2020) demonstrated that even a minor wind energy farm of 20 wind towers could trigger high bat mortality in the absence of adequate conservation measures. To the best of our knowledge, the only study investigating the impact of wind energy towers on plant species biodiversity in Romania concluded that in the Mehedinti Mountains (SW Romania) there are no significant differences between grassland communities nearby wind towers and those situated 300 m away from towers ( Pătru-Stupariu et al, 2019 ). However, the study was performed on a small-scale wind farm and did not capture plant communities from wind tower technological platforms.…”