Offshore wind farms change ecosystems, study shows. These large-scale facilities can strongly influence marine primary production, as well as oxygen levels inside and outside areas. These are the conclusions reached by researchers from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon, related to the North Sea and published in Communications Earth & Environment.
The expansion of wind farms in the North Sea is progressing, but the consequences for the marine environment in which they are built have not yet been fully investigated. Scientists at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon have already provided valuable information about its effects in previous studies.
Some of them are already happening, others are still to be expected due to the constant expansion of the turbines. In order to better understand them and fill in the knowledge gaps, a team of researchers is working on different key elements of the problem. For example, wake turbulences (air vortices caused by wind turbines) have been shown to change the flow and stratification of the water below them. However, the climate just above the sea surface is also changing.
The most recent research confirms that the impacts also lead to an altered spatial distribution of the components of the marine ecosystem. This includes the distribution of nutrients, phytoplankton and zooplankton, as well as biomass in the sediment, the food base of many bottom-dwelling organisms. In the model study for deeper marine areas, the researchers found that the amount of biogenic carbon in the sediment would increase locally by 10 percent and the oxygen concentration, in an area where it is already very low, could decrease further.
In addition, the already proven wind changes would lead to a local modification of the primary phytoplankton production. This would not only occur in the areas of wind farms. It also has consequences for the distribution of zooplankton, the food base of many fish. The early life stages of certain species often depend on its availability “at the right time and place.”
A spatial and temporal restructuring of the zooplankton distribution can influence these chains of processes and, therefore, positively or negatively affect the quantity of available fish. For that reason, the small change in primary production would have a lasting impact on the entire food web in the southern North Sea.
“Our results show that the large expansion of offshore wind farms will have a significant impact on the structuring of marine coastal ecosystems. We need to understand them better and quickly, in addition to taking them into account in the management of coastal ecosystems”, the research concluded.
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