2010, University of Exeter, SeaGen Strangford Lough, Impacts of SeaGen Tidal Turbine on the Avian Community

Description

Data was collected during May 2005 and September 2009, although 2005 
data was omitted from the analysis as methodologies were still being refined. All statistical 
analyses and data manipulations were carried out in the R statistical and computing 
environment. The data were constrained to include only avian taxa, leaving 101014 
observations. Previous work into the effects of wind farms had identified ‘avoidance 
distance’ as the best metric to determine the impacts of such structures (Devereux et al. 
2008, Madsen & Boertmann 2008). Therefore the distance of each 
observation to the position of the SeaGen tidal turbine was calculated. Distances were calculated using 
the Haversine formula to calculate great-circle distances 
between the observation and SeaGen. This series contains the statistical report.