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Article Reference A global horizon scan of issues impacting marine and coastal biodiversity conservation
Located in Library / RBINS Staff Publications 2022
Mastersthesis Reference Amino Acid Fingerprinting to Distinguish Between Faecal Pellets of Fouling Fauna near an Offshore Wind Farm
Installation of OWFs have increased with the aim to combat climate change. They act as hard substrates which facilitates the growth of fouling fauna that are capable of enriching the sediments surrounding OWFs. Hence, biogeochemical changes occur and potentially creates a carbon sink, possibly demonstrating an unexpected positive effect of OWFs. Faecal pellets released by fouling fauna cannot be easily distinguished from other end-members of the OM pool (phytoplankton, zooplankton) and therefore this enrichment pathway has not been quantified yet. This study focused on optimising a CSIA-AA protocol for the novel use of amino acid fingerprinting of the FPs of dominant fouling fauna collected from an OWF in Belgium and investigate species-specific and season-stable patterns in AAs. Results suggested that the CSIA-AA protocol was successful in characterising the AAs in the FPs and were able to identify trophic AAs (increase in δ 15 N with trophic level) that were species- specific (alanine and isoleucine) and some that were stable across seasons (aspartic acid and leucine). Hence, future research can use CSIA-AA to accurately identify season-stable tracers that are specific to fouling fauna, characterise other end-members of the OM pool and estimate the contribution of each member to the carbon budget of an OWF.
Located in Library / RBINS Staff Publications 2022
Inbook Reference Blue mussel Mytilus edulis as habitat provider on offshore wind turbine foundations
We compare the species composition of the early (mussels not prevalent) and mature (mussels prevalent) subtidal colonizing communities at offshore windturbine foundations with special attention to the mobility and habitat preferences of the colonizing species. We identified 47 species belonging to nine different phyla from the samples of the mature community, including 21 species unique to the secondary substratum provided by the mussel shell, all of them are sessile species. Only 17 of the 37 species identified from the early subtidal colonizing community were present in the mature community. The main phyla present in both the early and mature samples were Mollusca, Arthropoda, and Annelida. Our findings confirm the hypothesis that mussels counteract the impoverishment of total species richness on wind turbines, caused by the abundant presence of Metridium senile in mature artificial hard substratum communities by providing secondary substratum for colonization by. sessile and hemi-sessile epifauna. The species assemblage found on these mussels is different from the one previously found on the piles, and only seventeen species (~36%) present in the mature community were already present in the first year after installation. In 2020, all bryozoan species (7) were exclusively observed on the secondary substratum provided by the shells of the mussels. However, these species were previously encountered on the scour protection or on the shells of other bivalves. This may be due to the fact that the secondary substratum provided by the mussels differs in physical properties (e.g., microhabitat complexity) from the primary (vertical) substratum of the pile.
Located in Library / RBINS Staff Publications 2021
Article Reference Climate change effects on the ecophysiology and ecological functioning of an offshore wind farm artificial hard substrate community
Located in Library / RBINS Staff Publications 2022 OA
Article Reference Climate change effects on the ecophysiology and ecological functioning of an offshore wind farm artificial hard substrate community
In the effort towards a decarbonised future, the local effects of a proliferating offshore wind farm (OWF) industry add to and interact with the global effects of marine climate change. This study aimed to quantify potential ecophysiolog- ical effects of ocean warming and acidification and to estimate and compare the cumulative clearance potential of suspended food items by OWF epifauna under current and future climate conditions. To this end, this study combined ecophysiological responses to ocean warming and acidification of three dominant colonising species on OWF artificial hard substrates (the blue mussel Mytilus edulis, the tube-building amphipod Jassa herdmani and the plumose anemone Metridium senile). In general, mortality, respiration rate and clearance rate increased during 3- to 6-week experimental exposures across all three species, except for M. senile, who exhibited a lower clearance rate in the warmed treatments (+3 °C) and an insensitivity to lowered pH (−0.3 pH units) in terms of survival and respiration rate. Ocean warming and acidification affected growth antagonistically, with elevated temperature being beneficial for M. edulis and lowered pH being beneficial for M. senile. The seawater volume potentially cleared from suspended food particles by this AHS colonising community increased significantly, extending the affected distance around an OWF foundation by 9.2% in a future climate scenario. By using an experimental multi-stressor approach, this study thus demonstrates how ecophysiology underpins functional responses to climate change in these environments, highlighting for the first time the integrated, cascading potential effects of OWFs and climate change on the marine ecosystem.
Located in Library / RBINS Staff Publications 2022
Unpublished Reference CROW: Visualize bird migration in your browser
Every spring and autumn, millions of birds migrate over Europe. They mainly do this at high altitudes and at night, making this phenomenon largely invisible to us. But not for weather radars! We developed the open source web application “CROW” so you can explore these data directly in your browser. CROW pulls vertical profile data (vpts) from a public repository, calculates migration traffic rate (MTR), bird density and other variables, and visualizes these as interactive charts. The application can be hosted on a static file server and only visualizes data from one radar at a time, making it highly portable and scalable. CROW was jointly developed by the Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO) and the Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium (RMI) in collaboration with the Royal Belgian Institute for Natural Sciences (RBINS), with financial support from the Belgian Science Policy Office (BelSPO valorisation project CROW). It is deployed at https://www.meteo.be/birddetection to show bird migration in real time across the Benelux. We are planning to deploy it for data in the ENRAM data repository (https://enram.github.io/data-repository/) as well.
Located in Library / RBINS Staff Publications 2022
Mastersthesis Reference Effect of pile driving on the seasonal and geographical distribution of the harbour porpoise (Phocoena phoecoena) in the Belgian Part of the North Sea
Located in Library / RBINS Staff Publications 2022
Inbook Reference Effects of the use of noise-mitigation during offshore pile driving on harbour porpoise (Phocoena phocoena)
In recent years, noise-mitigation technology became more efficient and noise levels during pile driving were reduced significantly. Using passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) datasets from 2016 (Nobelwind construction – no noise mitigation) and 2019 (Northwester 2 and SeaMade construction – Double Big Bubble Curtain) we analyse whether noise mitigation measures applied during the construction of offshore wind farms influenced the likelihood of detecting harbour porpoise (Phocoena phocoena) during pile driving in the Belgian part of the North Sea (BPNS). Exploratory analyses indicate reductions to the spatial and temporal extent of avoidance of the construction area by porpoise when noise mitigation is applied. Without noise mitigation, mean detection rates of porpoises reduced up to 15-20 km from the pile driving location. With noise mitigation however, mean detection rates of porpoises reduced to a lesser extent and this reduction mainly took place at 0-10 km from the pile driving.
Located in Library / RBINS Staff Publications 2021
Inbook Reference Energie (inclusief kabels en leidingen)
Located in Library / RBINS Staff Publications 2022
Inbook Reference Energy (including cables and pipes)
Located in Library / RBINS Staff Publications 2022