Abstract
Wind farms can help to mitigate increasing atmospheric carbon (C) emissions. However, disturbance caused by wind farm development must not have lasting deleterious impacts on landscape C sequestration. To understand the effects of wind farm development on peatlands, we monitored streamwater at Europe’s second largest onshore wind farm (539 MW), Whitelee, Scotland, for 31 months. Using nested catchment sampling to understand impacts on water quality, increasing macronutrient concentrations and exports were associated with wind farm development, particularly forest-felling and borrow pits. Low/poor water quality occurred in small headwater catchments most disturbed by development. At the site exit, dissolved organic C and soluble reactive phosphorus (SRP) concentrations increased during construction, though [SRP] recovery occurred within 2 years. Since C was lost and streamwater quality negatively affected, we propose future good practice measures for wind farm development, including limiting total disturbance within individual catchments and locating borrow pits, where deemed necessary, off site avoiding peatlands.
Highlights
IntroductionOnshore wind capacity in Scotland currently exceeds all other renewable energy resources combined (Scottish Government 2017)
Organic soils, such as peat, cover * 3% of the global land mass, and are important in Scotland (UK), Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article contains supplementary material, which is available to authorised users.constituting almost a quarter of Scotland’s land area (Chapman et al 2009)
Total forest-felling proportion, which incorporated forest felled during the observation period, positively influenced all macronutrient export, and [dissolved organic carbon (DOC)], [Particulate organic carbon (POC)] and [soluble reactive phosphorus (SRP)] in HY2013
Summary
Onshore wind capacity in Scotland currently exceeds all other renewable energy resources combined (Scottish Government 2017). In October 2017, Scotland had 3274 operational onshore wind turbines, 1515 under or awaiting construction, and more than 820 awaiting planning consent (Scottish Government 2017). UK peatlands generate greenhouse gas emissions of 3.72 Mt CO2 eq year-1, with many peatlands finely balanced between being a C source or sink (Worrall et al 2011). This ecoregion must be managed to maximise carbon storage and support other ecosystem services such as water source protection and flow regulation
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