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Influence of landscape and time of year on bat-wind turbines collision risks

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Abstract

Context

Collisions with wind turbines threaten bat populations worldwide. Previous studies tried to assess the effects of landscape on mortalities. Yet, the count of carcasses found per species is low, leading to a low statistical power. Acoustic surveys collect large datasets (proxy for bat density); however, if bat vertical distribution is not accounted for, a key mechanism in collisions is missed.

Objectives

Our goal was to disentangle the effects of landscape on bat density and vertical distribution to produce recommendations for wind farm siting.

Methods

With a vertical array of two microphones, we monitored the acoustic activity and located the vertical distribution of more than 16 bat species on 48 wind masts in France and Belgium (> 8000 nights). We modelled bat density and vertical distribution for six species in function of distance to water, woodland and buildings, and in function of the topography at three different scales (200 m, 1000 m and 5000 m).

Results

The proportion of flights at heights with collision risk was maximum in spring and autumn and minimum in summer for three species. This effect was often antagonistic to the effect of bat density. The landscape had a stronger effect on bat density than on bat vertical distribution.

Conclusions

Positioning wind farms away from woodland should reduce the density and therefore the collision risks of low-flying species but should be inefficient for high-flying species. The effect of topography was stronger at large scales and complex, thus studying situations such as coastlines or mountain passes would provide more insight.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Sébastien Devos, Marie-Lilith Patou, Julien Mérot, Alexandre Haquart, Julien Tranchard, Philippe Ferragne, Matthieu Guyot, Antonin Dhellemme, Matthieu Lageard, Paul Gillot, François Huchin, Julien Renglet, Magali Argaud and Estelle Cleach for their important contributions to equipment design and installation, data collection and acoustic analysis. We also thank one anonymous reviewer for commenting on the manuscript and Richard Iodice for the English proofreading.

Funding

This study was a collaboration between Biotope and the Muséum national d’Histoire Naturelle in the form of a PhD thesis funded by Biotope and the Association Nationale de la Recherche et de la Technologie (Grant No. 2015/0838).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre d’Ecologie et des Sciences de la Conservation (CESCO), Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Sorbonne Université, CP 135, 57 Rue Cuvier, 75005, Paris, France

    Charlotte Roemer, Yves Bas & Aurélie Coulon

  2. Biotope, 22 bd Maréchal Foch, Mèze, France

    Charlotte Roemer & Thierry Disca

  3. CEFE, CNRS, Univ Montpellier, Univ Paul Valéry Montpellier 3, EPHE, IRD, Montpellier, France

    Charlotte Roemer, Yves Bas & Aurélie Coulon

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  1. Charlotte Roemer
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Correspondence to Charlotte Roemer.

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Biotope is an environmental consultancy involved in wind turbine impact assessment studies. Two of the authors, Charlotte Roemer and Thierry Disca, were employees at Biotope at the time of submission. Authors thus declare a conflict of interest. However, authors take complete responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of their analysis.

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Roemer, C., Bas, Y., Disca, T. et al. Influence of landscape and time of year on bat-wind turbines collision risks. Landscape Ecol 34, 2869–2881 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-019-00927-3

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