Individuals to populations: The potential effects of large tidal arrays on mobile marine populations INDI-POP

MeyGen(www.MeyGen.com)将于今年秋天在彭特兰峡湾部署世界上第一个全尺寸商业潮汐涡轮机阵列。阵列的累积环境影响尚不能完全了解，本着部署和监测的精神，MeyGen将在监管机构--海洋苏格兰(MS)的密切监测下，在第一个阵列的基础上取得进展。阿伯丁大学(UoA)通过几项NERC赠款(Flowbec、Response、FORSITE)的研究成果，走在了设计和成功收集连续声学数据类型的前沿，并在分析方面取得了进展，这已被全球公认为衡量潮汐阵列潜在环境影响的最佳方法。UOA目前与MeyGen有KTP项目，除了之前在现场收集的数据外，还将从阵列位置收集实时和连续的声学数据。这个NERC案例博士将参与改变目前对这一新数据的分析，从理解动物如何改变它们在潮汐涡轮机周围的行为的层面上，看看这些变化是否会导致种群水平的影响，无论是积极的还是消极的。海洋可再生设备很有可能诱导个体，无论是鱼类、海鸟还是哺乳动物，改变它们正常的觅食、休息或迁徙行为，因为这些设备引入了一个以前没有突出和移动结构的区域，改变了物理流动模式，改变了噪音/压力。UOA目前的研究表明，随着单一测试涡轮机的引入，至少猎物(鱼)的行为发生了变化。所有这些变化都有可能导致捕食者(海鸟和哺乳动物)种群水平的影响，通过1)用于觅食/迁徙的能量/时间的数量、2)捕食/逃逸的成功率和3)与人为旋转结构的碰撞而导致死亡风险的个体的累积变化。这种程度的理解将导致可靠和有信心地发放发展提案许可证。花了几十年的研究才产生了详细的机械模型，这些模型驱动了许多鱼类、海鸟和海洋哺乳动物种群的种群动态。这项博士研究将站在详细的个体到种群模型的肩膀上，并在个体的能量/时间使用变化之间添加准确的功能反应关系，以便能够权衡由于大型可再生发展的增加而在种群水平上发生重大变化的相对风险。本博士研究将建立在我们目前的NERC案例博士(FORSITE)和其他以前的多学科NERC资助的项目(Flowbec，Response)对精细动物行为的新理解的基础上。该项目的成果将是，首先，具体说明如何最好地确定能量/时间使用的变化、成功捕食/逃逸和碰撞死亡风险与引入结构和物理流动变化所带来的变化之间的可量化关系。这将产生功能反应曲线，将能量/时间预算的变化与猎物行为、流速、湍流特性和叶片速度的变化联系起来。该项目的第二级成果将是产生一般功能关系模型，这些模型具有一系列物种类型(鱼类、海鸟、哺乳动物)在种群一级的产出，其中考虑到这些变化的累积影响。第三个结果将是创建一种通用的建模方法(测试许多物种是否具有对相同类型的生物物理变化的相同类型的功能响应曲线)，以便这种类型的方法可以应用于其他可再生行业。

The first full scale commercial tidal turbine array in the world is being deployed this autumn in the Pentland Firth by MeyGen (www.MeyGen.com). The cumulative environmental impacts of arrays cannot yet be fully understood and, in the spirit of deploy and monitor, MeyGen will progress with this first array while being closely monitored by the regulator, Marine Scotland (MS). The University of Aberdeen (UoA), via the research outcomes of several NERC grants (FLOWBEC, RESPONSE, FORSITE) is at the forefront of the design and successful collection of the type of continuous acoustic data and advances in analysis that has global agreement to be the best method of measuring potential environmental effects of tidal arrays. UoA has current KTP project with MeyGen and in addition to previous data collected at the site, will be collecting live and continuous range of acoustic data from the array location. This NERC CASE PhD will be involved in transforming the current analysis of this new data from the level of understanding of how animals are changing their behaviour around tidal turbines to see if those changes lead to population level effects, positive or negative.There is a high potential for marine renewable devices to induce individuals, whether they are fish, seabirds or mammals, to change their normal foraging, resting or migration behaviours due to the introduction of the devices to an area previously devoid of protruding and moving structures, changes to physical flow patterns and changes to noise/pressure. Current research from UoA is showing changes to, at least, prey (fish) behaviour with the introduction of single test turbines. All of these changes have potential to lead to impacts at the population level of predators (seabirds & Mammals) through cumulative changes in individuals in the 1) amount of energy/time used for foraging/migration, 2) success rate of predation/escape and 3)mortality risks through collision with man-made rotating structures.To create more certainty in this industry understanding is required of whether or not all of these potential changes will lead to significant impacts at the population level. This level of understanding would lead to reliable and confident licensing of development proposals. It has taken decades of research to produce detailed mechanistic models that drive the population dynamics of many fish, seabird and marine mammal populations. This PhD research will stand on the shoulders of that detailed individual-to-population modelling and add accurate functional response relationships between energy/time use changes in individuals so as to be able to weight up the relative risks of significant changes at population levels due to the addition of large scale renewable developments.This PhD will build on the new understanding of fine scale animal behaviour derived from our current NERC CASE PhD (FORSITE) and the other previous multidisciplinary NERC-funded projects (FLOWBEC, RESPONSE). The outcomes of this project will be, first, to specify methods of how best to define the quantifiable relationships between changes in energy/time use, successful predation/escape, and collision mortality risks with the changes brought about by introduction of structure and change in physical flow. This will produce functional response curves linking energetic/time budget changes with changes in prey behaviour, flow rates, turbulence characteristic and blade speeds. The second level of outcome of the project will be to produce general functional relationship models that have outputs at the population level for a range of species types (fish, seabirds, mammals) that takes into consideration the cumulative effects of these changes. The third outcome will be to create a generic modelling approach (testing if many species have the same types of functional response curves to the same type of bio-physical changes) so this type of method could be applied to other renewable industries.