Offshore wind developments - collision and displacement in petrels and shearwaters: literature review

3 Methods

We conducted a systematic literature search to compile, for each focal species, a summary of the current knowledge of: (i) distribution; (ii) population status and abundance; (iii) demography; (iv) foraging ecology and (v) pressures on populations. Our review makes particular reference to attributes that are of critical importance in assessing the vulnerability of these species to potential impacts of offshore wind turbines and associated infrastructure and activities, including: (i) collision risk; (ii) displacement and barrier effects; and (iii) attraction to artificial light. Given the potential differences in the distributions and behaviours of a species during the breeding and non-breeding periods, at different stages of the breeding season and for different age classes, we considered attributes and risks separately for different groups and times of year. While we primarily focus on studies conducted within Scotland, relevant information collected elsewhere, and on closely related species, is also included. We used a set of search terms (listed in Appendix X) to search Google Scholar and Web of Science to identify relevant peer-reviewed and grey literature. We examined the first 100 publications produced by each search and also examined the reference list of publications identified by the literature search that were deemed relevant to the topic. We also made use of the extensive personal libraries and subject knowledge of the authors, noting any publications not identified by the systematic literature review.

We compiled a set of all input parameters required to populate the various methods, models and tools that are currently used for assessment of impacts of offshore wind farms on seabirds, specifically: (i) Collison Risk Models (Band et al., 2007, McGregor et al., 2018); (ii) the NatureScot Apportioning method (NatureScot, 2018); (iii) the Marine Scotland Apportioning Tool (Butler et al., 2020); (iv) the Fate of Displaced Birds Tool (SeaBORD; Searle et al., 2018); (v) displacement matrices (SNCBs, 2017) and (vi) the Natural England PVA Modelling Tool (Searle et al., 2019). We cross-referenced the publications identified by the literature search with the set of input parameters and catalogued the data sources accordingly, noting whether studies had been conducted in Scotland or elsewhere. Input parameters for which no information was identified by the literature review were considered to represent data gaps.