Tougaard Jakob, Hermannsen Line, Madsen Peter T
Department of Bioscience, Section for Zoophysiology, Aarhus University, C. F. Møllers Alle 3, Building 1131, Aarhus C, 8000, Denmark.
J Acoust Soc Am. 2020 Nov;148(5):2885. doi: 10.1121/10.0002453.
Offshore wind turbines are increasingly abundant sources of underwater low frequency noise. This increase raises concern for the cumulative contribution of wind farms to the underwater soundscape and possible impact on marine ecosystems. Here, available measurements of underwater noise from different wind turbines during operation are reviewed to show that source levels are at least 10-20 dB lower than ship noise in the same frequency range. The most important factor explaining the measured sound pressure levels from wind turbines is distance to the turbines with smaller effects of wind speed and turbine size. A simple multi-turbine model demonstrates that cumulative noise levels could be elevated up to a few kilometres from a wind farm under very low ambient noise conditions. In contrast, the noise is well below ambient levels unless it is very close to the individual turbines in locations with high ambient noise from shipping or high wind speeds. The rapid increase in the number and size of offshore wind farms means that the cumulative contribution from the many turbines may be considerable and should be included in assessments for maritime spatial planning purposes as well and environmental impact assessments of individual projects.
海上风力涡轮机正日益成为水下低频噪声的丰富来源。这种增加引发了人们对风电场对水下声景的累积贡献以及对海洋生态系统可能影响的担忧。在此，对不同风力涡轮机运行期间水下噪声的现有测量数据进行了综述，结果表明，在相同频率范围内，声源级至少比船舶噪声低10 - 20分贝。解释风力涡轮机测量声压级的最重要因素是与涡轮机的距离，风速和涡轮机尺寸的影响较小。一个简单的多涡轮机模型表明，在极低的环境噪声条件下，风电场周围几公里范围内的累积噪声水平可能会升高。相比之下，除非在航运产生高环境噪声或风速高的地点非常靠近单个涡轮机，否则噪声远低于环境水平。海上风电场数量和规模的迅速增加意味着众多涡轮机的累积贡献可能相当大，并且也应纳入用于海洋空间规划目的的评估以及单个项目的环境影响评估中。
