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Ecological implications of accelerated seabed mobility around windfarms (EcoWind-ACCELERATE)

风电场周围海底加速流动的生态影响 (EcoWind-ACCELERATE)

基本信息

批准号：
NE/X008940/1
负责人：
Veerle Huvenne
金额：
$ 85.15万
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%2FX008940%2F1
关键词：
Ecological implications accelerated seabed mobility

项目摘要

THE PROBLEM: Offshore windfarms will be developed at an accelerated schedule under fast-track plans to switch away from fossil fuels. With ever larger offshore windfarms, and the cumulative effects of climate change, we thus urgently need to understand the way the seabed is modified in response and how such changes affect the wider marine ecosystem. When natural currents in the sea deviate around the wind turbines or anchors, the forces acting on the bed enhance, making sediments move and stay in suspension. This reduces the clarity of the water and changes the shape and sediment composition of the seabed, with impacts stretching far beyond the object. The seabed supports ecosystems that deliver a wide range of services incl. fishing, carbon storage, aggregates and coastal protection. The climate crisis will stretch impacts even further and into coastal zones, as future storm waves and rising sea levels will alter the ways energy from the sea is transferred to the seabed. All these changes combined can have wide-reaching impacts for organisms that live on or in the seabed, potentially changing biodiversity (species richness) and the delivery of some of these ecosystem services. The impacts at the seabed extend through the food chain to the water column and beyond as seabed dwelling fish are consumed by seabirds and cetaceans. Aggregations of fish can be strongly associated to particular seabed properties. If displacement or mortality occurs amongst these important prey species, this has knock-on effects for the deep-diving predators that cannot afford to be less efficient in foraging for food, like the seabirds that are protected by legislation. During this pivotal time of energy transition and national security, it is of crucial importance to better understand and unlock the potential of the marine environment for a renewable energy transition with added benefits to the ecosystem. AIM: This proposal sets out a strategy to assess the seabed response to the combination of accelerated windfarm expansion and accelerated climate change, and to quantify the implications for (1) biodiversity, (2) ecosystem services, (3) habitats, and (4) interactions between seabird populations and their food. We ultimately seek to help identify opportunities that benefit the conservation of species and increase biodiversity around windfarms. We will help windfarm developers design their monitoring strategies long beyond the life-span of our project. SUMMARY OF METHODS AND OUTPUTS: Via a multi-proxy study using observations, laboratory experiments and models, we will assess and map, under different climate predictions, how the stresses on the bed will be modified by 2050, how the distribution of seabed habitats and biodiversity will change, and how that drives changes to ecosystem services and the foraging success of deep-diving seabirds. We will design relevant scenarios, where we consider offshore windfarm size, scour mitigation strategies, predator behaviour and the ecosystem's vulnerability to change due to the combined effect of accelerated windfarm expansion and climate change. We will use the Eastern Irish Sea area as case study, as it is the home of a variety of seabird species with specific predator-prey relationships, of diverse seabed types and of considerable windfarm expansion nearby existing windfarms. To help all developers of windfarms in the UK, UK-scale maps will be made of the vulnerability of the seabed to change, and a new seabird vulnerability index will be developed. Our quantification of how these processes from seabed to seabirds interact can directly inform/feed into existing and future decision support tools. We will provide a tool where stakeholders can run their own simulations anywhere around the UK and for any given model/data resolution to quantify uncertainty levels of bed stress caused by windfarms, with cascading effects of uncertainty in habitat and biodiversity distribution and ecosystem services.

问题：在快速通道计划下，海上风力发电场将加速开发，以摆脱化石燃料。随着越来越大的海上风电场和气候变化的累积效应，我们迫切需要了解海床的变化方式，以及这种变化如何影响更广泛的海洋生态系统。当海上的自然水流偏离风力涡轮机或锚时，作用在海床上的力就会增强，使沉积物移动并保持悬浮状态。这降低了水的清晰度，改变了海底的形状和沉积物组成，其影响远远超出了物体。海底支撑着提供广泛服务的生态系统，包括捕鱼、碳储存、聚集体和海岸保护。气候危机的影响将进一步延伸到沿海地区，因为未来的风暴浪潮和海平面上升将改变从海洋向海底转移能量的方式。所有这些变化加在一起可能对生活在海底或海底的生物产生广泛影响，可能改变生物多样性（物种丰富度）和其中一些生态系统服务的提供。对海底的影响通过食物链延伸到水柱，甚至更远，因为海底栖息的鱼类被海鸟和鲸目动物吃掉。鱼类的聚集与特定的海底特性密切相关。如果在这些重要的猎物物种中发生迁移或死亡，这将对深海捕食者产生连锁反应，这些捕食者无法承受觅食效率降低的后果，比如受法律保护的海鸟。在这个能源转型和国家安全的关键时期，更好地了解和释放海洋环境的潜力，以实现可再生能源转型，并为生态系统带来额外的好处，这一点至关重要。目的：本提案提出了一项战略，以评估海底对加速风电场扩张和加速气候变化的反应，并量化其对(1)生物多样性、(2)生态系统服务、(3)栖息地和(4)海鸟种群与其食物之间相互作用的影响。我们最终寻求帮助找到有利于保护物种和增加风电场周围生物多样性的机会。我们将帮助风电场开发商设计他们的监测策略，远远超出我们项目的生命周期。方法与成果总结：通过使用观测、实验室实验和模型的多代理研究，我们将评估和绘制在不同气候预测下，到2050年海床上的压力将如何改变，海底栖息地和生物多样性的分布将如何变化，以及这将如何推动生态系统服务的变化和深潜海鸟的觅食成功。我们将设计相关的情景，在这些情景中，我们将考虑海上风电场的规模、减少冲刷的策略、捕食者的行为，以及由于风电场加速扩张和气候变化的共同影响，生态系统对变化的脆弱性。我们将以东爱尔兰海地区作为案例研究，因为它是具有特定捕食-猎物关系的各种海鸟的家园，具有不同的海底类型，并且在现有风电场附近有相当大的风电场扩建。为了帮助英国所有风电场的开发商，将绘制英国比例尺的海底变化脆弱性地图，并将开发新的海鸟脆弱性指数。我们对从海底到海鸟的这些过程如何相互作用的量化可以直接为现有和未来的决策支持工具提供信息。我们将提供一个工具，让利益相关者可以在英国任何地方运行他们自己的模拟，并对任何给定的模型/数据分辨率进行量化，以确定风电场引起的床应力的不确定性水平，以及栖息地、生物多样性分布和生态系统服务的不确定性的级联效应。