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

个体到种群：大型潮汐阵列对流动海洋种群的潜在影响 INDI-POP

• 批准号: 1969971
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Aberdeen
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2017 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-1969971
• 关键词: Individuals; populations; potential; effects; large

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.

世界上第一个全尺寸商业潮汐涡轮机阵列将于今年秋天由MeyGen（www.MeyGen.com）在彭特兰湾部署。阵列的累积环境影响尚未得到充分理解，本着部署和监测的精神，MeyGen将在监管机构苏格兰海洋局（MS）的密切监测下，推进第一个阵列。阿伯丁大学（UoA）通过几个NERC赠款（FLOWBEC，RESPONSE，FORSITE）的研究成果，处于设计和成功收集连续声学数据类型的最前沿，并在分析方面取得进展，全球一致认为这是测量潮汐阵列潜在环境影响的最佳方法。UoA目前与MeyGen合作开展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范围的声学数据。这个NERC CASE博士将参与改变目前对这些新数据的分析，从了解动物如何改变潮汐涡轮机周围的行为，看看这些变化是否会导致人口水平的影响，积极或消极的。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，改变他们正常的觅食，由于将设备引入到先前没有突出和移动结构的区域而导致的静止或迁移行为、物理流动模式的变化以及噪声/压力的变化。UoA目前的研究显示，随着单一测试涡轮机的引入，至少猎物（鱼类）的行为发生了变化。所有这些变化都有可能导致捕食者种群水平的影响（海鸟和哺乳动物）通过个体在1）用于觅食/迁移的能量/时间量方面的累积变化，2）捕食/逃逸的成功率和3）与人碰撞的死亡风险-为了在这个行业中创造更多的确定性，需要了解所有这些潜在的变化是否会导致重大影响，人口水平。这种程度的了解将导致可靠和有信心的开发建议许可证。人们花了几十年的研究来产生详细的机械模型，驱动许多鱼类，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人对群体建模的肩膀上，并在能量/能量之间添加准确的功能反应关系。个体的时间利用变化，以便能够权衡由于大规模可再生发展而导致的人口水平显著变化的相对风险。该博士学位将建立在对来自我们目前NERC案例的精细动物行为的新理解的基础上博士（FORSITE）和其他以前的多学科NERC资助的项目（FLOWBEC，响应）。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，成功捕食/逃逸，碰撞死亡率风险与结构和物理流变化带来的变化之间的可量化关系的方法。这将产生功能响应曲线，将能量/时间预算变化与猎物行为、流速、湍流特性和叶片速度的变化联系起来。该项目的第二个层面成果将是制作一般功能关系模型，这些模型在种群层面上为一系列物种类型（鱼类、海鸟、哺乳动物）提供产出，并考虑到这些变化的累积影响。第三个成果将是创建一个通用的建模方法（测试许多物种是否对同一类型的生物物理变化具有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工业。