Morant Jon, Payo-Payo Ana, María-Valera Ana, Pérez-García Juan Manuel
Department of Applied Biology, Miguel Hernández University of Elche, Elche, Spain; Centro de Investigación e Innovación Agroalimentaria y Agroambiental (CIAGRO-UMH), Orihuela, Spain; Department of Ecology, University of Alicante, Cra. San Vicente del Raspeig, Alicante, E-03690, Spain.
Departament de Biodiversity, Ecology y Evoluyion, Complutense Univerity of Madrid, Avda. de Séneca, 2. Ciudad Universitaria, 28040, Spain.
J Environ Manage. 2025 Jan;373:123808. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2024.123808. Epub 2024 Dec 30.
Offshore wind energy is experiencing accelerated growth worldwide to support global net zero ambitions. To ensure responsible development and to protect the natural environment, it is essential to understand and mitigate the potential impacts on wildlife, particularly on seabirds and marine mammals. However, fully understanding the effects of offshore wind energy production requires characterising its global geographic occurrence and its potential overlap with marine species. This study aims to generate risk maps of interaction between offshore and seabirds and marine mammals based on the distribution of their potential foraging areas. These maps will allow visualisation of the spatial occurrence of risk and its severity for both groups. To achieve it, we built a structural equation model of three levels (plankton, fish, and top predators) to predict small-ranged seabirds and marine mammal spatial richness as a proxy of potential feeding sites. Later, we overlapped these maps with global wind density (as a proxy of potential offshore development areas) to identify risk areas. Our results pointed to simplified trophic chain models that effectively explained the richness of small-ranged seabirds and marine mammals. Our risk maps reveal a high overlap with potential offshore wind development. Low-risk areas were located mainly in so-called Global North countries, suggesting vast knowledge gaps and potential hidden risks in these areas. Importantly, the highest risk values were found outside the Marine Protected Areas for both groups, underscoring the necessity for strategic planning and the expansion of renewable energy sources to avert potential conservation challenges in the future.
海上风能在全球范围内正经历加速增长，以支持全球净零排放的目标。为确保负责任的发展并保护环境，了解并减轻对野生动物，特别是海鸟和海洋哺乳动物的潜在影响至关重要。然而，要全面了解海上风能生产的影响，需要确定其在全球的地理分布以及与海洋物种的潜在重叠区域。本研究旨在根据海鸟和海洋哺乳动物潜在觅食区域的分布，生成它们之间相互作用的风险地图。这些地图将使我们能够直观地看到风险的空间分布及其对这两类动物的严重程度。为实现这一目标，我们构建了一个三级结构方程模型（浮游生物、鱼类和顶级捕食者），以预测小型海鸟和海洋哺乳动物的空间丰富度，作为潜在觅食地点的替代指标。随后，我们将这些地图与全球风密度（作为潜在海上开发区域的替代指标）叠加，以确定风险区域。我们的结果表明，简化的营养链模型能够有效地解释小型海鸟和海洋哺乳动物的丰富度。我们的风险地图显示，其与潜在的海上风电开发有高度重叠。低风险区域主要位于所谓的全球北方国家，这表明这些地区存在巨大的知识空白和潜在的隐藏风险。重要的是，两类动物的最高风险值均出现在海洋保护区之外，这凸显了战略规划以及扩大可再生能源以避免未来潜在保护挑战的必要性。
