8/30/2023 0 Comments Barotrauma definition![]() ![]() However, one highly cited 2008 study found bat carcasses near wind turbines that appeared to have died from internal hemorrhaging that is characteristic of barotrauma (trauma that results from exposure to sudden changes in ambient pressure), with no characteristic signs of impact trauma, such as broken bones. It was initially assumed that impact trauma was responsible for the overwhelming majority of turbine-related bat deaths, and even though bats have remarkable echolocation and aerobatic abilities, the speed at which turbine blades move make it difficult for bats to detect and avoid impact with the moving blades. One adverse outcome is the large number of bat deaths that occur at some wind turbine installations. As the number of deployed turbines grows, it is increasingly important to mitigate negative environmental impacts from wind turbine deployment. electricity production may come from wind by 2030. Between 20 in the United States, the installed capacity of wind turbines increased from 2.5 GW to over 105 GW, and at the end of 2019 there were over 60,000 utility-scale turbines installed across the country, accounting for more than 6.3% of the nation’s electricity generation. Over the last two decades, there has been a dramatic increase in the deployment of wind turbines. Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Wind Energy Technologies Office.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. ![]() Department of Energy (DOE) under Contract No. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication.ĭata Availability: All relevant data are within the manuscript.įunding: ML, BT, DJ, BS, DH - This work was authored by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, operated by Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC, for the U.S. This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. Received: ApAccepted: NovemPublished: December 31, 2020 ![]() Accordingly, if bats have a physiological response to rapid low- and high-pressure exposure that is similar to other mammals, we conclude that it is unlikely that barotrauma is responsible for a significant number of turbine-related bat fatalities, and that impact trauma is the likely cause of the majority of wind-turbine-related bat fatalities.Ĭitation: Lawson M, Jenne D, Thresher R, Houck D, Wimsatt J, Straw B (2020) An investigation into the potential for wind turbines to cause barotrauma in bats. Even a small change in the flight path results in the bat being hit by the blade or experiencing a much smaller pressure change. Further, our results show that for a bat to experience the largest possible magnitude of low- and high-pressures, they must take very specific and improbable flight paths that skim the surface of the blades. The magnitude of the high-pressures that bats may experience are approximately 80 times smaller than the exposure level that causes 50% mortality in mice, which have a body mass similar to several bat species that are killed by wind turbines. This comparison shows that the magnitude of the low-pressures bats experience when flying near wind turbines is approximately 8 times smaller than the pressure that causes mortality in rats, the smallest mammal for which data are available. Because there are no data available that characterize the pressure changes that cause barotrauma in bats, we compared our results to changes in pressure levels that cause barotrauma and mortality in other mammals of similar size. To address this shortcoming, we performed computational fluid dynamics simulations of a wind turbine and analytical calculations of blade-tip vortices to estimate the characteristics of the sudden pressure changes bats may experience when flying near a utility-scale wind turbine. To date, no published research has calculated the pressure changes that bats may be exposed to when flying near wind turbines and then used these data to estimate the likelihood that turbines cause barotrauma in bats. One theory that explains the mortality is that bats are not only killed by impact trauma, but also by barotrauma that results from exposure to the pressure variations caused by rotating turbine blades. The high rates of bat mortality caused by operating wind turbines is a concern for wind energy and wildlife stakeholders. ![]()
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