TY - JOUR
T1 - Statistical power analysis of seabird monitoring methods in strong tidal streams
AU - Couto, Ana
AU - Williamson, Benjamin J.
AU - Long, Caitlin
AU - Buck, Elaine
AU - Davies, Ian M.
AU - Scott, Beth E.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the NERC VertIBase project [NE/N01765X/1] and the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy’s offshore energy Strategic Environmental Assessment programme.
Funding Information:
This work was supported by the NERC VertIBase project [NE/N01765X/1] and the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy?s offshore energy Strategic Environmental Assessment programme.
Publisher Copyright:
© European Wave and Tidal Energy Conference 2021.
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - Due to imprecisions in the assessments of the environmental impacts of marine renewable energy devices on the surrounding environments, regulatory authorities often adopt a conservative approach by requiring extensive and stringent monitoring of potentially impacted species. Field surveys of seabirds, before and after device installation, are required to establish baseline conditions and monitor changes to these baselines, should a project be consented/licensed. However, assessments of the impact of devices through comparisons of pre-and post-construction species abundances may be unreliable due to the dynamic nature of environmental factors affecting the seasonal and spatial distribution of seabirds, resulting in survey programs with low statistical power to detect all but substantial changes. We hypothesise that including simultaneously collected data on predators, prey, and finescale characteristics of the water column in traditional survey designs could improve the ability to detect marine renewable devices' effects. Using power analysis methods, we show that incorporating hydrodynamic and prey covariates into the models not only increases the power to detect small changes in the number of seabirds due to the presence of devices but also reduced the number the surveys required to achieve similar power. Therefore, we recommend that power analyses covering multiple scenarios are included in the design phase of monitoring programmes to implement statistically robust and costeffective plans.
AB - Due to imprecisions in the assessments of the environmental impacts of marine renewable energy devices on the surrounding environments, regulatory authorities often adopt a conservative approach by requiring extensive and stringent monitoring of potentially impacted species. Field surveys of seabirds, before and after device installation, are required to establish baseline conditions and monitor changes to these baselines, should a project be consented/licensed. However, assessments of the impact of devices through comparisons of pre-and post-construction species abundances may be unreliable due to the dynamic nature of environmental factors affecting the seasonal and spatial distribution of seabirds, resulting in survey programs with low statistical power to detect all but substantial changes. We hypothesise that including simultaneously collected data on predators, prey, and finescale characteristics of the water column in traditional survey designs could improve the ability to detect marine renewable devices' effects. Using power analysis methods, we show that incorporating hydrodynamic and prey covariates into the models not only increases the power to detect small changes in the number of seabirds due to the presence of devices but also reduced the number the surveys required to achieve similar power. Therefore, we recommend that power analyses covering multiple scenarios are included in the design phase of monitoring programmes to implement statistically robust and costeffective plans.
KW - Hydrodynamics
KW - Prey presence
KW - Seabirds monitoring
KW - Statistical power analysis
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M3 - Conference article
AN - SCOPUS:85120084634
SN - 2706-6932
SP - 2360-1-2360-6
JO - Proceedings of the European Wave and Tidal Energy Conference
JF - Proceedings of the European Wave and Tidal Energy Conference
T2 - 14th European Wave and Tidal Energy Conference, EWTEC 2021
Y2 - 5 September 2021 through 9 September 2021
ER -