Dataset Information

Bird and bat species' global vulnerability to collision mortality at wind farms revealed through a trait-based assessment.

ABSTRACT: Mitigation of anthropogenic climate change involves deployments of renewable energy worldwide, including wind farms, which can pose a significant collision risk to volant animals. Most studies into the collision risk between species and wind turbines, however, have taken place in industrialized countries. Potential effects for many locations and species therefore remain unclear. To redress this gap, we conducted a systematic literature review of recorded collisions between birds and bats and wind turbines within developed countries. We related collision rate to species-level traits and turbine characteristics to quantify the potential vulnerability of 9538 bird and 888 bat species globally. Avian collision rate was affected by migratory strategy, dispersal distance and habitat associations, and bat collision rates were influenced by dispersal distance. For birds and bats, larger turbine capacity (megawatts) increased collision rates; however, deploying a smaller number of large turbines with greater energy output reduced total collision risk per unit energy output, although bat mortality increased again with the largest turbines. Areas with high concentrations of vulnerable species were also identified, including migration corridors. Our results can therefore guide wind farm design and location to reduce the risk of large-scale animal mortality. This is the first quantitative global assessment of the relative collision vulnerability of species groups with wind turbines, providing valuable guidance for minimizing potentially serious negative impacts on biodiversity.

SUBMITTER: Thaxter CB

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5597824 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Bird and bat species' global vulnerability to collision mortality at wind farms revealed through a trait-based assessment.

Thaxter Chris B CB Buchanan Graeme M GM Carr Jamie J Butchart Stuart H M SHM Newbold Tim T Green Rhys E RE Tobias Joseph A JA Foden Wendy B WB O'Brien Sue S Pearce-Higgins James W JW

Proceedings. Biological sciences 20170901 1862

Mitigation of anthropogenic climate change involves deployments of renewable energy worldwide, including wind farms, which can pose a significant collision risk to volant animals. Most studies into the collision risk between species and wind turbines, however, have taken place in industrialized countries. Potential effects for many locations and species therefore remain unclear. To redress this gap, we conducted a systematic literature review of recorded collisions between birds and bats and win ...[more]

PMID: 28904135

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Project description:Wind energy offers substantial environmental benefits, but wind facilities can negatively impact wildlife, including birds and bats. Researchers and managers have made major efforts to chronicle bird and bat mortality associated with wind facilities, but few studies have examined the patterns and underlying mechanisms of spatial patterns of fatalities at wind facilities. Understanding the horizontal fall distance between a carcass and the nearest turbine pole is important in designing effective search protocols and estimating total mortality. We explored patterns in taxonomic composition and fall distance of bird and bat carcasses at wind facilities in the Northeastern United States using publicly available data and data submitted to the US Fish and Wildlife Service under scientific collecting and special purpose utility permits for collection and study of migratory birds. Forty-four wind facilities reported 2,039 bird fatalities spanning 128 species and 22 facilities reported 418 bat fatalities spanning five species. Relative to long-distance migratory birds, short-distance migrants were found farther from turbines. Body mass of birds and bats positively influenced fall distance. Turbine size positively influenced fall distance of birds and bats when analyzed collectively and of birds when analyzed separately from bats. This suggests that as turbines increase in size, a greater search radius will be necessary to detect carcasses. Bird and bat fall distance distributions were notably multimodal, but only birds exhibited a high peak near turbine bases, a novel finding we attribute to collisions with turbine poles in addition to blades. This phenomenon varied across bird species, with potential implications for the accuracy of mortality estimates. Although pole collisions for birds is intuitive, this phenomenon has not been formally recognized. This finding may warrant an updated view of turbines as a collision threat to birds because they are a tall structure, and not strictly as a function of their motion.

Project description:Curtailment of turbine operations during low wind conditions has become an operational minimization tactic to reduce bat mortality at terrestrial wind energy facilities. Site-specific studies have demonstrated that bat activity is higher during lower wind speeds and that operational curtailment can effectively reduce fatalities. However, the exact nature of the relationship between curtailment cut-in speed and bat fatality reduction remains unclear. To evaluate the efficacy of differing curtailment regimes in reducing bat fatalities, we examined data from turbine curtailment experiments in the United States and Canada in a meta-analysis framework. We used multiple statistical models to explore possible linear and non-linear relationships between turbine cut-in speed and bat fatality. Because the overall sample size for this meta-analysis was small (n = 36 control-treatment studies from 17 wind farms), we conducted a power analysis to assess the number of control-treatment curtailment studies needed to understand the relationship between fatality reduction and change in cut-in speed. We also identified the characteristics of individual curtailment field studies that may influence their power to detect fatality reductions, and in turn, contribute to future meta-analyses. We found strong evidence that implementing turbine curtailment reduces fatality rates of bats at wind farms; the estimated fatality ratio across all studies was 0.37 (p < 0.001), or a 63% decrease in fatalities. However, the nature of the relationship between the magnitude of treatment and reduction in fatalities was more difficult to assess. Models that represented the response ratio as a continuous variable (e.g., with a linear relationship between the change in cut-in speed and fatalities) and a categorical variable (to allow for possible non-linearity in this relationship) both had substantial support when compared using AICc. The linear model represented the best fit, likely due to model simplicity, but the non-linear model was the most likely without accounting for parsimony and suggested fatality rates decreased when the difference in curtailment cut-in speeds was 2m/s or larger. The power analyses showed that the power to detect effects in the meta-analysis was low if fatality reductions were less than 50%, which suggests that smaller increases in cut-in speed (i.e., between different treatment categories) may not be easily detectable with the current dataset. While curtailment is an effective operational mitigation measure overall, additional well-designed curtailment studies are needed to determine precisely whether higher cut-in speeds can further reduce bat fatalities.

Dataset Information

Bird and bat species' global vulnerability to collision mortality at wind farms revealed through a trait-based assessment.

Publications

Bird and bat species' global vulnerability to collision mortality at wind farms revealed through a trait-based assessment.

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