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Resource Documents: Germany (70 items)
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Diet analysis of bats killed at wind turbines suggests large-scale losses of trophic interactions
Author: Scholz, Carolin; and Voigt, Christian
[Abstract] Agricultural practice has led to landscape simplification and biodiversity decline, yet recently, energy-producing infrastructures, such as wind turbines, have been added to these simplified agroecosystems, turning them into multi-functional energy-agroecosystems. Here, we studied the trophic interactions of bats killed at wind turbines using a DNA metabarcoding approach to shed light on how turbine-related bat fatalities may possibly affect local habitats. Specifically, we identified insect DNA in the stomachs of common noctule bats (Nyctalus noctula) killed by wind turbines in . . .
More »Insect fatalities at wind turbines as biodiversity sinks
Author: Voigt, Christian
[Abstract] Evidence is accumulating that insects are frequently killed by operating wind turbines, yet it is poorly understood if these fatalities cause population declines and changes in assemblage structures on various spatial scales. Current observations suggest that mostly hill-topping, swarming, and migrating insects interact with wind turbines. Recently, the annual loss of insect biomass at wind turbines was estimated for Germany to amount to 1,200t for the plant growth period, which equates to about 1.2 trillion killed insects per year, . . .
More »Offshore wind farms are projected to impact primary production and bottom water deoxygenation in the North Sea
Author: Daewel, Ute; et al.
Abstract – The wind wake effect of offshore wind farms affects the hydrodynamic conditions in the ocean, which has been hypothesized to impact marine primary production. So far only little is known about the ecosystem response to wind wakes under the premises of large offshore wind farm clusters. Here we show, via numerical modeling, that the associated wind wakes in the North Sea provoke large-scale changes in annual primary production with local changes of up to ±10% not only at the offshore . . .
More »Emergence of Large-Scale Hydrodynamic Structures Due to Atmospheric Offshore Wind Farm Wakes
Author: Christiansen, Nils; et al.
[Conclusion] … Over time, the extraction of energy by offshore wind farms results in extensive areas of reduced wind speed and subsequently the decrease of the shear-driven forcing at the sea surface boundary. As this reduces the momentum transfer from the atmosphere into the ocean, horizontal velocities and turbulent mixing initially decrease several tens of kilometers around offshore wind farms. Thereby the induced perturbations imply significant changes for the residual currents in the respective areas. Furthermore, convergence and divergence of . . .
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