Migratory Bird Flyways And Off-Shore Wind Farms:- A Co-Evolutionary Overlap
by John Laumer, Philadelphia on 03.17.08
Why is it that sites with otherwise ideal characteristics often overlap migratory bird flyways - waterfowl mainly? Coincidence, or predetermined evolutionary outcome?
On Jan. 10, Green Energy Ohio released the first two years of data from an ongoing study in which wind over Lake Erie is being measured from a 165-foot tower on top of Cleveland's water intake crib. It's one of 10 monitors around the state but the only one that lies offshore. Not surprisingly, the strongest, most consistent winds were documented there, resulting in some excitement. The real test, though, will be in the Toledo area, where the wind-wildlife issue collides.
Northwest Ohio is seen by developers as the Great Lakes region's most ideal spot for harnessing wind, given its shallow water and proximity to urban areas.It also lies in the path of two important migratory bird flyways [as pictured], so the issue is far from being settled.
Waterfowl which nest in Canada and migrate Southward for the winter not only follow optimal wind, they follow winds to traditional stop-overs (marshes, estuaries, and lakes) for food and shelter. They'll leave the Canadian prairie pothole region in late fall, just ahead of arctic air masses; and, in spring, reverse course - over the same flyways.
That the co-evolutionary selection pressure is identical for both migratory waterfowl, such as the Canvasback (pictured) and wind farm siting in the Upper Mid-West and along the coasts stems from the fact that wind blowing across open water creates less turbulence than hilly, or tree- and city-covered, land, resulting in a more laminar flow with higher average velocity. Good for migrating birds and for wind turbines.
This issue will not be resolved by re-engineering the turbines or by politics. Wildlife biologists will need to observe and measure the interactions of migratory birds and lake-anchored wind turbines, just as they have in Europe and for the proposed Cape Wind project.
See also::Common Eco-Myth: Wind Turbines Kill Birds AND Ohio Prods Ontario To Act On Great Lakes Wind Power AND Greenpeace Gets It Right: More Wind Power In Erie A Good Idea
Via::Toledo Blade, "Governor shows guts with green initiatives" Image credit::Bird Nature, North American Flyways AND Yukon Flats Wildlife Refuge, Male Canvasback Duck
Birds are creatures of the air, ergo: It should be no surprise that winds and migration routes are closely related.
What IS a surprise is that the propeller-type horizontal axis wind turbine is still an issue. Why aren't these people using wind turbines without a bird-injury component? Check out www.windside.com -- vertical axis wind turbines that are bird-neutral and have a better power production curve than the bird killers.
And, what's the fascination with HUGE turbines? Why try to force wind-generated power into the giant centralized power plant model when the source is so decentralized and distributed?
Birds are creatures of the air, ergo: It should be no surprise that winds and migration routes are closely related.
What IS a surprise is that the propeller-type horizontal axis wind turbine is still an issue. Why aren't these people using wind turbines without a bird-injury component? Check out www.windside.com -- vertical axis wind turbines that are bird-neutral and have a better power production curve than the bird killers.
And, what's the fascination with HUGE turbines? Why try to force wind-generated power into the giant centralized power plant model when the source is so decentralized and distributed?
Can someone point me to the pictures of all the dead birds piled up beneath the windmills...
In the United States in 2003, wind generators accounted for only three-thousandths of 1 percent of bird killings -- no more than 37,000 birds. That same year, possibly as many as a billion birds died in collisions with buildings, and electrical power lines may have accounted for more than a billion more deaths, the report said. And domestic cats were responsible for the demise of an estimated hundreds of millions of songbirds and other species every year.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/05/04/MNG9SPKPT31.DTL
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I agree. The point of this post, however, is that offshore wind farms are new to the US (with one small exception) and have not been studied specifically with regard to migratory waterfowl impacts.
I just completed a research project on the Blue Canyon Wind Farm in Oklahoma, so in response to your questions . . .
Pictures, and more importantly, data, can be found by googling "Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area." There are a number of good studies on avian mortality (look especially for the California Energy Commission studies by Smallwood et al.). 20-year estimates of bird kills range from 36,000 to 80,000, including several thousand Golden Eagles. It isn't pretty.
That said, Altamont uses quite old turbine designs that are far more threatening to birds. Those designs, unfortunately, are the kinds of smaller turbines that one might use in smaller, decentralized systems. It turns out that bigger, higher turbines are a very effective way of reducing bird kills as well as being more efficient producers of electricity.
My research found that Blue Canyon, which uses these kinds of designs, had no statistically significant effect on bird populations in the very nearby Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge. It isn't peer-reviewed (yet), so don't go using it in court or to make policy, but I think it does a decent enough job of getting the basics right.