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

Abstract

Background Wind energy farms have become a popular solution to produce green energy worldwide. Their development within protected areas has increased dramatically in the past decade, and the effects on the rare, endemic and threatened plant species (i.e., protected plant species), essential for habitat conservation and management, are little known. Only a few studies directly quantify the impacts of wind energy farms on them. Our study analyzes the impact of wind energy farms on rare, endemic, and threatened plant species in steppic habitats and their recovery potential over a ten-year period on a wind energy farm within the Dealurile Agighiolului Natura 2000 site (Dobrogea Region, SE Romania). Methods We surveyed the rare, endemic, and threatened plant species within a radius of approximately 50 m around each of the 17 wind towers during the wind farm operational phase. We selected 34 plots to allow the investigation of two types of areas: (1) a disturbed area overlapping the technological platform, where the vegetation was removed before construction, and (2) an adjacent undisturbed area. To understand the effects of the wind energy farm on the rare, endemic, and threatened plant species diversity and the differences between the disturbed and undisturbed areas, we calculated under both conditions: (1) plant species richness; (2) sample-size-based rarefaction and extrapolation with Hill numbers parameterized by species richness; (3) non-metric multidimensional scaling of Jaccard dissimilarity index; (4) functional diversity; (5) beta-diversity (including replacement and nestedness of species). Results As a result of the disturbances caused by the wind energy farm’s development, we identified a sharp contrast between the diversity of rare, endemic, and threatened plants inhabiting disturbed and undisturbed areas near the wind towers. Our research showed that less than 40% of the total inventoried rare, endemic, and threatened species colonized the disturbed sites. Species turnover within undisturbed plots was higher than disturbed plots, implying that the plant community’s heterogeneity was high. However, a higher richness in rare, endemic, and threatened plant species was found in the plots around the wind towers in grasslands of primary type. Sample-size-based rarefaction and extrapolation with Hill numbers by observed species richness indicated an accurate estimation of species richness in disturbed habitats, demonstrating that recovery after wind energy farm construction was incomplete after ten years of low-intensity plant restoration and conservation activities. Thus, we consider that operating activities must be reconfigured to allow the complete recovery of the communities with rare, endemic, and threatened plant species.

Impacts of 319 wind farms on surface temperature and vegetation in the United States

“…However, positive and insignificant impacts were observed as well. The decreased vegetation is mainly caused by the construction of wind farms and the associated land cover changes, limiting vegetation growth in wind farms (Tang et al 2017, Urziceanu et al 2021. The increased vegetation in wind farms may be caused by the changing microclimate conditions induced by wind farms.…”

“…To date, the impacts of wind farms on local vegetation are mixed with no consensus in the literature. There have been studies reporting negative impacts of wind farms on plant species diversity in the Dobrogea Region of Southeast Romania (Urziceanu et al 2021) and vegetation growth in Northern China (Tang et al 2017), while others found no detectable impacts (Xia et al 2016). However, positive impacts on vegetation were observed in the Gobi desert (Xu et al 2019), and simulations of large-scale wind farm deployment projected enhanced vegetation growth due to precipitation feedbacks in the Sahara (Li et al 2018).…”

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

“…The impacts of wind farms on ecology and climate have always been a concern of experts and scholars. Ecological impacts are mainly concerned with the growth of vegetation communities (Liu et al, 2020), the structure and function of vegetation communities (Urziceanu et al, 2021), landscape patterns (Diffendorfer et al, 2019), fauna (Ferrer et al, 2022), and other relevant aspects. Climatic influences focus on various aspects such as land surface temperature (Zhou et al, 2012), soil physicochemical properties (Zhang et al, 2022), wind speed (Luo et al, 2021), humidity and precipitation (Wang et al, 2023), and other relevant aspects.…”

Effects of habitat factors on the plant diversity on naturally-restored wind farm slopes

“…Identifying the plant communities and its drivers could contribute to ecological restoration projects in a specific region ( Squeo et al, 2016 ). In the disturbed areas surrounding wind towers in Romania, enforcing conservation activities had a more significant impact than controlling habitat factors on the recovery of plant communities and diversity ( Urziceanu et al, 2021 ). There are many studies from China on the ecological restoration of side slopes at mines and river courses that have shown that a restoration strategy based on native herbs, shrubs and trees can successfully control soil erosion and create a stable slope ( Keehn & Feldman, 2018 ).…”

“…The diversity level of the existing plant community is an important indicator of the stability and resilience ability of the ecosystem. The types of species, quantity of species, and combination of species in the plant community can directly affect its structure, succession behavior, and diversity, affecting its ecological function ( Urziceanu et al, 2021 ). Research on the effects of habitat factors on plant diversity during natural ecological restoration is important for the selection and configuration of plant species in side slope restoration projects.…”