Developing an automated risk management tool to minimize bird and bat mortality at wind facilities.

Julia Robinson Willmott,Greg M Forcey,Lauren A Hooton

doi:10.1007/s13280-015-0707-z

Abstract

A scarcity of baseline data is a significant barrier to understanding and mitigating potential impacts of offshore development on birds and bats. Difficult and sometimes unpredictable conditions coupled with high expense make gathering such data a challenge. The Acoustic and Thermographic Offshore Monitoring (ATOM) system combines thermal imaging with acoustic and ultrasound sensors to continuously monitor bird and bat abundance, flight height, direction, and speed. ATOM’s development and potential capabilities are discussed, and illustrated using onshore and offshore test data obtained over 16 months in the eastern USA. Offshore deployment demonstrated birds tending to fly into winds and activity declining sharply in winds >10 km h−1. Passerines showed distinct seasonal changes in flight bearing and flew higher than non-passerines. ATOM data could be used to automatically shut down wind turbines to minimize collision mortality while simultaneously providing information for modeling activity in relation to weather and season. Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s13280-015-0707-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Highlights

Current developments and future plans to make extensive use of onshore and offshore wind resources in both Europe and the USA (MMS 2006; DOE 2008; EEA 2009) haveElectronic supplementary material The online version of this article contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.increased awareness that wind turbines have the potential to adversely impact birds and bats (e.g., Drewitt and Langston 2006; Arnett et al 2008; Cryan 2011)
Because significant portions of bird and bat migration occur at night (Kunz et al 2007), directly monitoring the timing and magnitude of migration is difficult and costly, in offshore environments (Normandeau Associates 2012)
We describe the development of the ATOM system, consider how it might be used for real-time impact mitigation in operational wind farms and for gathering appropriate data to assess and minimize impacts of proposed new developments, and discuss how it could contribute to addressing crucial gaps in knowledge of bird and bat ecology

Summary

Introduction

Current developments and future plans to make extensive use of onshore and offshore wind resources in both Europe and the USA (MMS 2006; DOE 2008; EEA 2009) haveElectronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s13280-015-0707-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.increased awareness that wind turbines have the potential to adversely impact birds and bats (e.g., Drewitt and Langston 2006; Arnett et al 2008; Cryan 2011). Most regulatory agencies across Europe and the USA recommend that wind energy developers assess potential impacts to birds and bats, among other wildlife groups, from wind turbines. These impacts may be direct, such as mortality from collisions, or indirect, such as loss of foraging and breeding habitat (Kunz et al 2007; USFWS 2012). Because of logistical and financial limitations, risk assessment studies of bats and migratory birds at planned wind farms are routinely based on non-continuous surveys at discrete times of the year (Cook et al 2012)

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