[M-ZZ39] Scientific, technical, and educational aspects of renewable energy

[MZZ39-P04] Radar Monitoring of Bird Activity over a Proposed Offshore Wind Farm

*Chian-Chiau LIN¹, Hsin-Chih Lai², Chen-Jeih Pan³, Shih-Sian Yang² (1.EMimg Environmental Technology Co., Ltd., 2.Department of Green Energy and Environmental Resources, Chang Jung Christian University, 3.Department of Space Science & Engineering, National Central University)

Keywords:Wind Energy, Radar, Bird Migration Tracks, Signal Identification

Radar detection is widely proposed to assess the environmental impacts of wind turbines on birds. Notably, a mobile radar system can be deployed to any place and monitor bird activity at any time. In the present study, a mobile marine radar was employed to survey the bird activity over an 11 km radius covering a proposed wind farm about 8–10 km offshore Changhua. The radar system detected 231 cases of bird activity during 28 field campaigns conducted between July 2018 and June 2020. Among these cases, 131 appeared stripe-shape echoes and the rest 100 appeared spotted echoes on radar. For each case, its flight path was determined through the continuous monitoring of bird activity. The majority (176 cases) of the recorded flight paths are parallel to the coast line, whereas birds in the other 41 cases flew eastward (approaching the coast line) and the rest 14 cases flew westward (away from the coast line), respectively. On the other hand, bird echo becomes rare as the distance from inshore increasing. 76.5% cases were found within 4 km distance from the coast line, whereas only 5.6% cases appeared 6–8 km offshore and no case was found more than 8 km away from the coast line. On the basis of the statistical results, it is concluded that birds may appear around the area neighbored the proposed wind farm, however, the possibility of birds flying through the wind farm seems to be very low.