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

今年秋天，MeyGen （www.MeyGen.com）将在Pentland Firth部署世界上第一个全尺寸商用潮汐涡轮机阵列。阵列的累积环境影响还不能完全理解，本着部署和监测的精神，MeyGen将在监管机构苏格兰海洋（MS）的密切监测下推进第一个阵列。阿伯丁大学（UoA）通过几项NERC资助（FLOWBEC， RESPONSE， FORSITE）的研究成果，在设计和成功收集连续声学数据方面处于领先地位，并在分析方面取得进展，这是全球公认的测量潮汐阵列潜在环境影响的最佳方法。UoA目前与MeyGen有一个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。这位NERC CASE博士将参与改变对这些新数据的当前分析，从理解动物如何在潮汐涡轮机周围改变它们的行为，看看这些变化是否会导致种群水平的影响，是积极的还是消极的。海洋可再生装置极有可能诱导个体（无论是鱼类、海鸟还是哺乳动物）改变其正常的觅食、休息或迁徙行为，因为将这些装置引入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，引入单个测试涡轮机后，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，通过个体在以下方面的累积变化：1)用于觅食/迁徙的能量/时间，2)捕食/逃跑的成功率，以及3)与人造旋转结构碰撞造成的死亡风险。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对人口水平产生重大影响。这种程度的了解将导致可靠和自信地批准发展建议。经过数十年的研究，才产生了驱动许多鱼类、海鸟和海洋哺乳动物种群动态的详细机制模型。这项博士研究将建立在详细的个体-人口模型的基础上，并在个体的能量/时间使用变化之间添加准确的功能响应关系，以便能够权衡由于大规模可再生能源开发的增加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我们目前的NERC CASE博士学位（FORSITE）和其他先前NERC资助的多学科项目（FLOWBEC， RESPONSE）对精细尺度动物行为的新理解的基础上。这个项目的结果将是，首先，指定如何最好地定义能量/时间使用变化、成功捕食/逃脱和碰撞死亡风险与引入结构和物理流变化所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。该项目的第二级成果将是为考虑到这些变化的累积影响的一系列物种类型（鱼类、海鸟、哺乳动物）制作具有种群一级产出的一般功能关系模型。第三个结果将是创建一种通用的建模方法（测试是否许多物种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），这样这种方法就可以应用于其他可再生能源行业。

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.