Roswag Marc, Roswag Anna, Roswag Matthias Sebastian, Fietz Joanna, Taefi Tessa Touridocht
Department of Competence Center for Renewable Energies and Energy Efficiency, Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, Hamburg, Germany.
Department of Zoology, University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany.
PLoS One. 2025 Jan 22;20(1):e0314679. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0314679. eCollection 2025.
With the increasing height and rotor diameter of wind turbines, bat activity monitoring within the risk area becomes more challenging. This study investigates the impact of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) on bat activity and explores acoustic bat detection via UAS as a new data collection method in the vicinity of wind turbines. We tested two types of UAS, a multicopter and a Lighter Than Air (LTA) UAS, to understand how they may affect acoustically recorded and analyzed bat activity level for three echolocation groups: Pipistrelloid, Myotini, and Nyctaloid. We hypothesized (i) that the LTA UAS will not affect bat activity levels while a multicopter, due to higher noise emission, might have a negative impact. Our results support this hypothesis, because multicopter flights have a highly significant negative impact on bat activity levels with a medium effect size, particularly for the Myotini (P < 0.001, dm = 0.54) and Nyctaloid group (P < 0.001, dn = 0.55) and a small effect size for the Pipistrelloid group (P < 0.001, dp = 0.36). In contrast, the LTA UAS had no significant effect on bat activity for each echolocation group (P > 0.05 for each group), suggesting its suitability for non-intrusive acoustic monitoring. Furthermore, we hypothesized (ii) that larger UAS propellers prevent the deterrent effect on bats. However, despite the use of larger propellers for the multicopter UAS compared to previous studies, we observed a deterrence effect for all echolocation groups. Additionally, we hypothesized that (iii) any initial deterrence or attraction effect might decrease over time. Our results did not support this hypothesis because we did not observe any habituation of bats to UAS within the 15-minute flight period. Our study highlights the potential of UAS for bat monitoring but underscores the critical importance of selecting appropriate UAS types and operating noise levels for successful surveillance efforts.
随着风力涡轮机高度和转子直径的不断增加，对风险区域内蝙蝠活动的监测变得更具挑战性。本研究调查了无人机系统（UAS）对蝙蝠活动的影响，并探索通过无人机进行蝙蝠声学检测，作为风力涡轮机附近一种新的数据收集方法。我们测试了两种类型的无人机，一种是多旋翼无人机，另一种是轻于空气（LTA）无人机，以了解它们如何影响三个回声定位组（伏翼类、鼠耳蝠类和夜蝠类）通过声学记录和分析得到的蝙蝠活动水平。我们假设：（i）轻于空气的无人机不会影响蝙蝠活动水平，而多旋翼无人机由于噪声排放较高，可能会产生负面影响。我们的结果支持了这一假设，因为多旋翼飞行对蝙蝠活动水平有高度显著的负面影响，效应量中等，特别是对鼠耳蝠类（P < 0.001，dm = 0.54）和夜蝠类组（P < 0.001，dn = 0.55），对伏翼类组效应量较小（P < 0.001，dp = 0.36）。相比之下，轻于空气的无人机对每个回声定位组的蝙蝠活动均无显著影响（每组P > 0.05），表明其适用于非侵入性声学监测。此外，我们假设：（ii）更大的无人机螺旋桨可防止对蝙蝠产生威慑作用。然而，尽管与之前的研究相比，多旋翼无人机使用了更大的螺旋桨，但我们仍观察到对所有回声定位组都有威慑作用。此外，我们假设：（iii）任何初始的威慑或吸引作用可能会随着时间而减弱。我们的结果不支持这一假设，因为在15分钟的飞行期间内，我们没有观察到蝙蝠对无人机产生任何适应现象。我们的研究突出了无人机在蝙蝠监测方面的潜力，但强调了为成功的监测工作选择合适的无人机类型和操作噪声水平的至关重要性。
