PELAgIO: Physics-to-Ecosystem Level Assessment of Impacts of Offshore Windfarms

PELAgIO：海上风电场影响的物理到生态系统层面的评估

• 批准号: NE/X00872X/1
• 负责人: Michela De Dominicis
• 金额: $ 80.77万
• 依托单位: NATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHY CENTRE
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FX00872X%2F1
• 关键词: PELAgIO; Physics; Ecosystem; Level; Assessment

By 2050 it's estimated >400 GW of energy will be gathered by offshore wind in the North Sea alone. For scale, Hinkley Point C nuclear reactor is projected to produce 3.2 GW. How will this increased anthropogenic use of our coastal seas impact already stressed marine ecosystems? And how will that same production of renewable energy offset risks of extreme climate change that, left unchecked, will increase the risk of biodiversity declines. There are many complex changes to ecosystems linked to Offshore Wind Farms (OWFs) that we need to understand now, so that the extent of increasing wind energy extraction further offshore is managed in the most sustainable way. An important effect of large wind energy extraction will be to reduce the amount of energy that would normally go into local ocean currents via surface stress, altering sea state and mixing. Conversely, there will be local increases in turbulence around turbine structures and seabed scouring near fixed foundations. Any change in ocean mixing may change the timing, distribution and diversity of phytoplankton primary production, the base of the food chain for marine ecosystems, to some degree. This has knock-on-effects on the diversity, health and locations of pelagic fish that are critical prey species of commercial fish, seabirds and marine mammals. Observed changes caused by operational OWFs in the southern North Sea include local surface temperature rise and the displacement of seabirds and fishing fleets from the OWF footprint, whereas seals often appear to be feeding near turbines. All of these changes have a linked component, important prey fish species, which are likely to aggregate near structures (as seen at other offshore platforms). Seabirds and fishing fleets subsequently have less space to hunt, with potentially increased competition for fish. However, if OWFs are also de facto marine protected areas and so positively affect local primary production, they may provide good habitat for fish population growth. So, what are the cumulative effects of current OWF developments and the thousands of additional planned structures? Do the physical, biogeochemical and ecosystem changes exacerbate or mitigate those resulting from climate change? And, as OWFs migrate further offshore as floating structures, how can current knowledge based on shallow, coastal fixed turbines be suitably extrapolated to understand the impacts on ecosystems dependent on seasonal cycles that are typical of deeper waters?PELAgIO will address all of these questions through an inter-disciplinary, multi-scale observation and modelling framework that spans physical mixing through to plankton production, on to the response of fish and whole ecosystems. We will collect fine-scale data using the latest multi-instrumented acoustic platforms set beside and away from OWFs, complemented by autonomous surface and submarine robots to capture continuous and coincident data from physics to fish, over multiple scales and seasons to fully understand what is 'different' inside an OWF and how big its footprint is. These new data will test the effects on seabirds and marine mammals to build an OWF ecosystem parameterization that accounts for changes to mixing and wind deficit impacts, and is scalable to next-generation OWFs. This bottom-up, comprehensive approach will enable true calibration and validation of 3D ocean-biogeochemical-sediment modelling systems, from the scale of turbine foundations up to the regional and even cross-shelf scales. Identified changes will be integrated into Bayesian ecosystem models that enable the cumulative effects of ecological, social and economic trade-offs of different policy approaches for OWFs to be quantifiably assessed for present day conditions, during extreme events and under climate change.

据估计，到2050年，仅在北海的海上风力就将收集400亿瓦的能源。就规模而言，欣克利角C核反应堆预计将产生3.2吉瓦的电力。这种不断增加的对沿海海域的人为利用将如何影响已经受到压力的海洋生态系统？同样的可再生能源生产将如何抵消极端气候变化的风险？如果不加以控制，极端气候变化将增加生物多样性下降的风险。与海上风电场（owf）相关的生态系统有许多复杂的变化，我们现在需要了解这些变化，以便以最可持续的方式管理近海风能开采的增加程度。大型风能开采的一个重要影响将是减少通常会通过表面应力、改变海况和混合而进入当地洋流的能量。相反，涡轮结构周围的局部湍流和固定地基附近的海底冲刷也会增加。海洋混合的任何变化都可能在一定程度上改变浮游植物初级生产的时间、分布和多样性，而浮游植物是海洋生态系统食物链的基础。这对作为商业鱼类、海鸟和海洋哺乳动物的重要猎物的远洋鱼类的多样性、健康和位置产生了连锁反应。据观察，在北海南部海域，海面温度升高，海鸟和渔船船队被移出海面，而海豹经常在涡轮机附近觅食。所有这些变化都有一个相关的组成部分，即重要的猎物鱼类，它们可能聚集在建筑物附近（如在其他海上平台所见）。海鸟和渔船队的捕猎空间随之减少，对鱼类的竞争可能会加剧。然而，如果自由渔场事实上也是海洋保护区，因而对当地的初级生产产生积极影响，它们可能为鱼类种群的增长提供良好的栖息地。那么，目前的OWF发展和数以千计的额外计划结构的累积影响是什么？物理、生物地球化学和生态系统的变化是加剧还是减轻了由气候变化引起的变化？此外，随着owf以漂浮结构的形式进一步向近海迁移，目前基于浅海固定涡轮机的知识如何能够适当地外推，以了解依赖于季节周期的生态系统的影响，这是典型的深水？PELAgIO将通过跨学科、多尺度的观察和建模框架来解决所有这些问题，该框架涵盖了物理混合、浮游生物生产、鱼类和整个生态系统的反应。我们将使用最新的多仪器声学平台收集精细尺度的数据，这些平台设置在OWF附近和附近，辅以自主的水面和水下机器人，以捕获从物理到鱼类的连续和一致的数据，跨越多个尺度和季节，以充分了解OWF内部的“不同”之处，以及它的足迹有多大。这些新数据将测试对海鸟和海洋哺乳动物的影响，以建立一个考虑混合和风亏影响变化的OWF生态系统参数化，并可扩展到下一代OWF。这种自下而上的综合方法将使三维海洋-生物地球化学-沉积物建模系统的真正校准和验证成为可能，从涡轮机基础的规模到区域甚至跨大陆架的规模。已确定的变化将被整合到贝叶斯生态系统模型中，使不同政策方法对OWFs的生态、社会和经济权衡的累积效应能够在当前条件下、极端事件期间和气候变化下进行量化评估。