Workpackage 5: Environmental and Ecological Impacts
Strands
- Collation and presentation of all findings from
completed studies and those presently underway - There is already
a significant amount of research being undertaken on the environmental
effects of marine energy convertors (MECs). The above studies have
sought for example not to duplicate relevant work undertaken in the
COWRIE programme for offshore wind, or in the EMEC monitoring programme
– led by Dr Stuart Gibb and Professor Jonathan Side
[Output: Workpackage report which is updated regularly to reflect
new work]
- Consideration of regime change in the coastal waters
of the North of Scotland - Regime shift in these ecosystems has
been postulated. Certainly recent years have seen ecosystem impacts
of climate change and dramatic fluctuations in the fortunes for example
of the sandeel fishery and of the breeding success in nesting seabirds.
Clarity and a comprehensive understanding is required in all considerations
relating to the monitoring of environmental and ecosystem impacts
of MEC deployment. For example the loss of high-energy sentinel species
(such as Fucus distichus) may be a result of increases in coastal
sea temperatures rather than simply a consequence of the extraction
of energy – led by Dr Melissa
Bowen, Professor Jonathan Side,
and Dr David Woolfe, with invited contributors
[Output: Workpackage report which is updated regularly to reflect
new work, and publications]
- New PhD scholarships - designed to support outstanding
students in one or more of the following themes: water column ecological
effects, ecological/environmental models of change in energy regime,
marine protected areas (MPA)/fishery impact modelling (e.g. effects
on commercial fisheries/marine conservation), acoustic and remote
sensing methods and monitoring, cost effective technologies and methods
for detecting ecological change, wave energy convertors (WEC) effects
on coastal processes. – Host insitution and surpevisors selected
as appropriate.
