Displacement assessment during the breeding season Tom Evans SNCB - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Displacement assessment during the breeding season Tom Evans

SNCB ‘Matrix Approach’ • Joint Statutory Nature Conservation Bodies (SNCB) Interim Displacement Advice Note (2017) – Calculates displacement mortality only, not impacts on productivity – Assumes a certain proportion of birds observed in development footprint plus a buffer (2 km standard) are displacement – Then assumes a mortality rate for birds displaced – Present a range of displacement and mortality rates http://archive.jncc.gov.uk/pdf/Joint_SNCB_Interim_Displacement _AdviceNote_2017.pdf

Individual-based models of displacement • Searle, K., Mobbs, D., Butler, A., Bogdanova, M., Freeman, S., Wanless, S. and Daunt, F. (2014) Population consequences of displacement from proposed offshore wind energy developments for seabirds breeding at Scottish SPAs – Requires a displacement rate – Effects on adult annual survival (mortality) and productivity – Models both barrier and displacement effects – Individual-based model to predict the time/energy budgets of breeding seabirds during the chick-rearing period – Optimal foraging theory – Uses GPS tracking data or density decay functions https://www2.gov.scot/Topics/marine/marineenergy/Research/SB7

SeabORD displacement assessment tool • K R Searle, D C Mobbs, A Butler, R W Furness, M N Trinder and F Daunt. (2018). Finding out the Fate of Displaced Birds – User friendly tool (SeabORD) – Refinements to Searle et al. (2014) model – Method for translating observations at sea to average demographic consequences https://data.marine.gov.scot/dataset/finding-out-fate-displaced-birds

Strategic Environmental Assessment North Seas Energy (SEANSE): Scottish Waters East Region Regional Sectoral Marine Plan Strategic Ornithology Study Francis Daunt, Kate Searle, Deena Mobbs, Mark Trinder, Adam Butler, Peter G.H. Evans, James Waggitt Ran both the Matrix Approach and SeabORD for the same scenarios SeabORD leads to higher equivalent mortality rates for displaced birds than those currently advised for use with the Matrix Approach

Improving estimates of seabird body- mass survival rates Francis Daunt, Kate Searle, Richard Howells, Mike Harris and Sarah Wanless (Centre for Ecology & Hydrology) Zhou Fang, David Elston (Biomathematics and Statistics Start of breeding season Scotland) End of breeding season a) Estimated the relationship between mass at the end of the breeding season and over-wintering survival Mass probability Used recapture/resighting data from Isle of May for key species Time Found evidence for a positive relationship between end- b) of-breeding season body mass and the survival of puffins probability Survival with less evidence of an effect in kittiwakes, guillemots and razorbills. Mass at end of breeding season