Predicting the impacts of wind farms on seabirds: An individual‐based model

Abstract

Abstract1. Individual-based models (IBMs) are a powerful tool in predicting the consequences of environmental change on animal populations and supporting evidence-based decision making for conservation planning.2. There are increasing proposals for wind farms in UK waters and seabirds are a vulnerable group, which may be at risk from these developments.3. We developed a spatially explicit IBM to investigate the potential impacts of the installation of wind farms in the English Channel and North Sea on body mass, productivity and mortality of a breeding population of Northern gannets for which we have tracking data. A baseline model with no wind farms accurately represented the status of a sampleof tracked gannets at the end of the 90-day chick-rearing period, and the behaviourtime budget was similar to that of tracked gannets. Model simulations in the presence of wind farms indicated that installations shouldhave little impact on the gannet population, when either avoidance behaviour or collision risk scenarios were simulated. Furthermore, wind farms would need to be ten times larger or in more highly used areas in order to have population-level impacts on Alderney's gannets.6. Synthesis and applications. Our spatially explicit individual-based models (IBM) highlight that it is vital to know the colony-specific foraging grounds of seabirds that may be impacted, when identifying potential wind farm sites, in order to account for cumulative impacts from multiple sites. Avoiding areas highly used for foraging and commuting, and avoiding large-scale developments should be effective in limiting gannet mortality as a result of collision, competition and energy expenditure. Our IBM provides a robust approach which can be adapted for other seabird populations or to predict the impacts from other types of spatial change in the marine environment. K E Y W O R D Scollision risk, evidence-based decision making, individual based models, Morus bassanus, Northern gannets, offshore development, predictive modelling, seabirds, wind farmsThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. | Journal of Applied EcologyWARWICK-EVANS Et Al. | INTRODUCTIONThe marine environment is under increasing pressure from anthropogenic activities including overfishing, climate change and offshore developments such as wind farms (Halpern et al., 2012). These installations may enhance the environment by creating de facto no fishing zones (Inger et al., 2009), but there is concern about the negative impacts they may have on Europe's breeding seabirds (Garthe & Hupop, 2004). These impacts may include direct mortality from (2016) conclude that the current methods to predict the impacts of offshore wind farms on seabirds are inadequate, and this demonstrates a demand to establish a robust methodology which can be used by planners to mitigate the impacts on seabirds, when identifying wind farm sites.Evid...

Predicting the impacts of anthropogenic disturbances on marine populations

“…This includes several species of birds, cetaceans, and possibly fish, which are groups that have been reported to be displaced by noise (Gibson et al, 2017;Shannon et al, 2016). It differs from previous models developed for assessing impacts of anthropogenic disturbances in marine environments (Langton, Davies, & Scott, 2014;Topping & Petersen 2011;Warwick-Evans, Atkinson, Walkington, & Green, 2018) in explicitly considering the links between disturbances/noise, animal movement, fitness and population dynamics. The generality of the processes included in the model should, in principle, allow realistic population dynamics to emerge, but lack of independent data currently precludes corroboration of model predictions.…”

Out of sight of wind turbines—Reindeer response to wind farms in operation

“…To date most research on environmental impact of WFs, and possible mitigation measures have been developed in relation to avian species, such as sea birds and raptors, and bats (e.g., Thaxter et al, 2017;Warwick-Evans, Atkinson, Walkington, & Green, 2018;Wiens et al, 2017). Research on how WF developments affect terrestrial animals is increasing.…”

Marine Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas for Penguins in Antarctica, Targets for Conservation Action

“…Therefore, alternate solutions to direct observation of distribution patterns, such as atsea surveys or individual level tracking (e.g., Carroll et al, 2019), are required. Several methodologies for estimating seabird at-sea distribution in un-sampled regions have been proposed (Franklin, 2010;Grecian et al, 2012;Thaxter et al, 2012;Grimm et al, 2016;Soanes et al, 2016;Wakefield et al, 2017;Warwick-Evans et al, 2017Zhang et al, 2017;Critchley et al, 2018Critchley et al, , 2019Dias et al, 2018b; Supplementary Appendix: Determining at-sea distribution). Determining which method is most appropriate to derive species at-sea distributions should be considered in the context of available data for a given species and its typical foraging ecology (Cleasby et al, 2018;Oppel et al, 2018;Bolton et al, 2019).…”