Biodiversity and Renewable Energy
- NOTOC**
Biodiversity and Renewable Energy
The transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy is a central part of efforts to limit climate change, but renewable energy infrastructure is not environmentally neutral. Solar farms, wind turbines, hydropower dams, transmission lines, bioenergy crops, geothermal facilities, offshore wind farms, and marine-energy installations can affect species and ecosystems in very different ways. Their effects depend heavily on where projects are located, how they are designed and operated, what habitats they replace, and how biodiversity is incorporated into planning.
Research increasingly shows that climate and biodiversity goals do not have to be treated as competing objectives. Strategic land-use planning can steer renewable-energy infrastructure away from protected areas, migration corridors, intact ecosystems, threatened-species habitat, and other biologically important locations. At the same time, some renewable-energy sites can be managed to provide habitat, restore vegetation, support pollinators, or create other ecological benefits.
The challenge is therefore not simply whether renewable energy should be developed, but how the energy transition can proceed while minimizing ecological damage and, where possible, improving conditions for nature.
Planning, Siting, and Land-Use Trade-Offs
Location is one of the strongest determinants of the biodiversity impact of renewable-energy development. Renewable-energy resources frequently overlap with protected areas, Key Biodiversity Areas, wilderness, important wildlife habitat, Indigenous lands, agricultural land, and areas providing valuable ecosystem services.
Studies of renewable-energy planning show that coordinated spatial planning can substantially reduce these conflicts. Directing development toward already disturbed landscapes, degraded agricultural land, existing industrial areas, transportation corridors, and other lower-conflict locations can reduce pressure on intact ecosystems without necessarily preventing large-scale renewable-energy deployment.
Planning also needs to consider cumulative effects. A single solar or wind project may have limited ecological consequences, while dozens of projects, roads, substations, transmission lines, mines, and other associated infrastructure can collectively fragment habitat across an entire region.
Climate change further complicates planning because species ranges and migration patterns are moving. Biodiversity-sensitive energy planning increasingly incorporates both present and projected future habitat rather than relying exclusively on current species distributions.
The renewable-energy supply chain also extends biodiversity impacts far beyond generation sites. Mining for copper, lithium, nickel, rare-earth elements, construction materials, and other resources needed for energy infrastructure can overlap protected areas and other conservation priorities. Biodiversity considerations therefore need to extend from mineral extraction through construction, operation, decommissioning, recycling, and disposal.
Solar Energy and Biodiversity
Utility-scale solar facilities can affect vegetation, birds, mammals, reptiles, bats, insects, soil communities, and ecological connectivity. Large installations may replace or fragment habitat, create barriers to animal movement, alter soil conditions, and change local temperature, moisture, shade, and wind patterns.
These effects are highly dependent on location and management. Solar development on intact desert or grassland habitat can impose substantial ecological costs, while installations on degraded or intensively cultivated land may have much smaller effects.
Solar panels themselves create a mosaic of environmental conditions. Areas beneath panels receive less sunlight and often experience altered temperature and soil moisture. These microhabitats can favor some plant and animal species while disadvantaging others. Research consequently finds both increases and decreases in biodiversity depending on ecosystem type, vegetation, construction practices, panel configuration, and management.
Pollinator-friendly solar development has emerged as one potential conservation opportunity. Native flowering vegetation planted between and beneath panels can provide habitat for bees and other insects while contributing ecosystem services such as pollination, erosion reduction, carbon storage, and water regulation. Prairie restoration and other forms of ecovoltaic management have produced encouraging results at some sites.
Agrivoltaics similarly combines solar generation with farming or grazing. High-mounted or widely spaced panels can maintain agricultural production while potentially providing habitat and reducing competition for land. Ecological outcomes nevertheless vary, and poorly designed systems can reduce plant diversity or disrupt insects and soil communities.
Floating photovoltaics introduce a different set of concerns. Covering portions of lakes and reservoirs changes light penetration, temperature, turbulence, oxygen conditions, nutrient cycling, algae, microorganisms, and aquatic food webs. Rapid expansion of floating solar therefore creates a growing need for ecological monitoring.
Wind Energy, Birds, Bats, and Terrestrial Wildlife
Wind power presents some of the most extensively studied interactions between renewable energy and wildlife. Birds and bats can collide with turbine blades, while roads, turbine pads, transmission infrastructure, and human activity can fragment habitat or alter animal behavior.
Risk varies greatly among species and locations. Raptors, migratory birds, and some bat species can be particularly vulnerable. Forest wind development can create conflicts with tree-roosting bats, while turbines placed near migration corridors, nesting areas, wetlands, or important feeding habitat may produce disproportionate impacts.
The surrounding landscape is often as important as the turbine itself. Habitat structure, turbine density, rotor dimensions, migration routes, vegetation, water sources, and local species composition all influence mortality and displacement.
Several mitigation techniques have shown promise. Avoiding high-risk habitat remains the most effective strategy. Operational curtailment—temporarily slowing or stopping turbines during periods of high bat activity—can substantially reduce mortality. Other approaches include acoustic deterrents, improved turbine placement, wildlife monitoring, sensitivity mapping, and technological approaches designed to make turbines more visible to birds.
Long-term monitoring is particularly important because preconstruction assessments do not always predict actual wildlife mortality after turbines begin operating.
Offshore Wind and Marine Renewable Energy
Offshore wind, tidal turbines, wave-energy devices, and other marine renewable technologies interact with highly dynamic marine ecosystems. Potential effects include underwater noise, collision, habitat alteration, displacement, electromagnetic fields, changes in hydrodynamics, entanglement, vessel traffic, and disturbance of seabirds, fish, marine mammals, sea turtles, and benthic organisms.
Offshore wind foundations can also create artificial reef effects. Hard structures placed in areas dominated by soft sediment may attract invertebrates and fish, sometimes increasing local abundance or biomass. Such localized increases do not necessarily indicate an overall biodiversity benefit because ecosystem composition and food webs may also change.
Floating offshore wind introduces additional concerns associated with anchors, mooring lines, cables, and possible entanglement with fishing gear. Research is increasingly evaluating risks to whales, sharks, rays, sea turtles, seabirds, and commercially important fish.
Tidal and wave-energy devices create additional collision and underwater-noise questions. Monitoring technologies—including acoustic sensors, optical cameras, autonomous vehicles, and specialized sensor systems—are improving researchers' ability to observe interactions between animals and operating equipment.
Marine spatial planning can reduce conflict by identifying areas where renewable-energy resources overlap fisheries, protected habitats, migration routes, sensitive species, shipping, recreation, and other marine uses.
Transmission Lines and Grid Infrastructure
Renewable generation requires extensive electricity transmission, meaning biodiversity impacts cannot be evaluated only at power plants themselves.
Power lines can kill birds through collision and electrocution. Risk is particularly high for large-bodied species, migratory birds, and species whose flight behavior or morphology makes them less able to detect or avoid wires. Routing lines away from important habitat, placing infrastructure along existing rights-of-way, undergrounding lines where practical, and attaching visual markers to wires can reduce mortality.
Transmission corridors also alter habitat through clearing and vegetation management. These effects are not universally negative. Rights-of-way managed as native grassland, shrubland, prairie, or flowering habitat can support plants, bees, butterflies, birds, and other wildlife. Intensively mowed or herbicide-treated corridors generally provide fewer ecological benefits.
Grid planning therefore offers opportunities to treat transmission corridors not merely as infrastructure but, where appropriate, as components of larger habitat and connectivity networks.
Hydropower and Freshwater Biodiversity
Hydropower affects biodiversity through mechanisms very different from wind or solar energy. Dams interrupt river connectivity, alter flows, change sediment transport and water temperature, modify floodplains, create reservoirs, and block the movement of aquatic organisms.
Migratory fish are particularly affected when dams prevent movement between feeding, spawning, and nursery habitats. Turbine passage can expose fish to blade strike, rapid pressure changes, shear forces, turbulence, and disorientation.
Hydropeaking—the rapid adjustment of water releases to match electricity demand—can repeatedly raise and lower downstream water levels. Research links these fluctuations to habitat changes, fish displacement, interrupted spawning, exposed eggs, stranded juvenile fish, and reductions in some macroinvertebrate communities.
The ecological consequences extend beyond fish. Hydropower can affect plankton, insects, mollusks, amphibians, reptiles, aquatic mammals, riparian vegetation, and terrestrial wildlife whose habitat is inundated by reservoirs.
Mitigation options include fishways, bypass systems, improved turbine designs, environmental-flow requirements, slower ramping of water releases, habitat restoration, dam modernization, and selective dam removal.
Pumped-storage hydropower creates additional ecological considerations because repeated movement of water between reservoirs can alter temperature, turbidity, sediment movement, and aquatic habitat.
Bioenergy and Biomass
Bioenergy illustrates particularly clearly that the ecological effect of renewable energy depends on what land use it replaces.
Large monocultures of energy crops can simplify landscapes, displace natural habitat, and reduce biodiversity. Forest biomass harvesting can remove dead wood and other structures needed by forest species, while conversion of forests or grasslands to energy crops can produce major habitat and carbon losses.
Conversely, perennial bioenergy crops can sometimes improve biodiversity when they replace intensive annual agriculture. Perennial grasses, mixed-species plantings, short-rotation woody crops, and structurally diverse systems can provide habitat for birds, insects, mammals, and other organisms while reducing soil disturbance.
Studies comparing bioenergy systems therefore show that there is no single biodiversity outcome associated with biomass. Crop choice, landscape context, previous land cover, harvesting practices, spatial arrangement, and management determine whether bioenergy produces ecological benefits or losses.
Bioenergy planning must also account for food production, water use, carbon storage, ecosystem services, and conservation priorities rather than optimizing energy production alone.
Geothermal Energy and Biodiversity
Geothermal power generally occupies less surface area than many other renewable technologies, but development can still affect biodiversity through roads, drilling pads, pipelines, forest clearing, water use, pollution, noise, and habitat fragmentation.
Research in geothermal landscapes has documented changes in bird, bat, insect, and aquatic communities near infrastructure. Studies in Kenya and Costa Rica illustrate the importance of considering geothermal development in biologically valuable landscapes, especially when projects occur near national parks, forests, or areas containing unique geothermal ecosystems.
Careful siting, minimizing clearing, monitoring water discharges, maintaining habitat connectivity, and restoring disturbed sites can reduce these impacts.
Mitigation, Restoration, and Biodiversity Co-Benefits
Across renewable-energy technologies, the strongest recurring conservation principle is the mitigation hierarchy: avoid biodiversity impacts where possible, minimize unavoidable impacts, restore disturbed ecosystems, and address significant remaining impacts only after those earlier steps have been taken.
Avoidance is particularly important because restoring a damaged ecosystem is often more difficult than preventing its destruction. Placing projects away from intact habitat, threatened-species populations, migration corridors, wetlands, free-flowing rivers, and other high-value ecosystems can eliminate many conflicts before construction begins.
Better project design and operation can reduce remaining impacts. Examples include wildlife-sensitive turbine operation, fish-friendly hydropower technologies, native vegetation at solar facilities, line markers on transmission systems, improved marine monitoring, habitat-friendly rights-of-way, and ecological restoration following construction.
Renewable infrastructure can sometimes produce biodiversity co-benefits when conservation is deliberately incorporated into design. Solar farms can support pollinator habitat and native grasslands, transmission corridors can function as ecological refuges, and offshore structures can create new habitat for some marine organisms.
These opportunities should not obscure genuine ecological costs. Instead, they demonstrate that biodiversity outcomes are strongly influenced by management choices.
Conclusion
Renewable energy is indispensable to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions and limiting the long-term ecological consequences of climate change. At the same time, the physical infrastructure required for the energy transition can place substantial pressure on terrestrial, freshwater, and marine ecosystems.
The evidence shows that these conflicts are neither uniform nor inevitable. The same technology can produce very different biodiversity outcomes depending on where it is located and how it is designed, constructed, operated, and eventually decommissioned.
The most effective strategy is to incorporate biodiversity into energy planning from the beginning. Strategic siting can avoid biologically important areas; monitoring can identify emerging problems; operational changes can reduce wildlife mortality; restoration can improve disturbed land; and ecological design can sometimes allow energy production and habitat conservation to coexist.
A successful energy transition therefore requires more than replacing fossil fuels with renewable technologies. It requires building a renewable-energy system that recognizes biodiversity, ecosystem function, landscape connectivity, and wildlife conservation as fundamental components of long-term sustainability.
- TOC**
Cross-Cutting Planning, Siting, Policy, Supply Chains, and Land Use
| Grace C. Wu et al. | Nature Communications | 2026
Models global trade-offs among conservation, agriculture, and renewable energy and shows how coordinated land allocation can reduce species exposure and carbon loss.
| Zhijie Zhou et al. | Nature Ecology & Evolution | 2026
Compares centralized and provincial renewable-energy planning in China and finds that governance scale changes which biodiversity values and species are most exposed.
| Runjia Yang et al. | Journal of Cleaner Production | 2026
Assesses photovoltaic development across China and identifies overlap with Key Biodiversity Areas and threatened-species exposure.
| Authors listed by journal | Cell Reports Sustainability | 2026
Examines how wind, solar, and hydropower development overlaps with existing human pressures on terrestrial biodiversity in Europe and the Americas.
| Rachael V. Gallagher et al. | Plants, People, Planet | 2026
Reviews how renewable-energy infrastructure and supply chains can affect plant diversity and argues for stronger consideration of plants in energy planning.
Summarizes IUCN's work on managing biodiversity, ecosystem-service, livelihood, and rights risks associated with renewable-energy development.
| Ke Wang et al. | Resources, Environment and Sustainability | 2026
Uses multi-objective land planning in China to balance renewable-energy potential with habitat, ecosystem-service and vulnerable-carbon priorities.
| Daphne Condon et al. | Energy Policy | 2026
Evaluates how U.S. State Wildlife Action Plans address large-scale wind and solar development and maps projected overlap with conservation opportunity areas.
| Authors listed by journal | Environmental Challenges | 2026
Compares biodiversity integration in renewable-energy policy in France, Italy and Spain under the European Green Deal and identifies gaps in cumulative-impact management.
| Authors listed by journal | Environmental Impact Assessment Review | 2026
Projects solar expansion in Northwest China's drylands and evaluates future exposure of modeled biodiversity hotspots under alternative development scenarios.
| Nature Reviews Biodiversity | Nature Reviews Biodiversity | 2025
Explains how strategic planning can reduce biodiversity harm from the energy transition while creating opportunities for climate and nature goals to reinforce one another.
| Bora Aska et al. | Nature Reviews Biodiversity | 2025
Reviews biodiversity impacts, social conflicts, and knowledge gaps associated with mining the minerals and construction materials needed for the renewable-energy transition.
| Catherine Fletcher et al. | IUCN / The Biodiversity Consultancy | 2025
Sets out an action agenda for reducing biodiversity impacts embedded in the mineral and material supply chains for wind, solar, and transmission infrastructure.
| The Nature Conservancy | The Nature Conservancy | 2025
Describes a national smart-siting approach in Montenegro designed to identify lower-conflict areas for wind and solar expansion.
| Authors listed by journal | One Earth | 2025
Models pathways in Brazil showing that extensive renewable-energy development can be coordinated with protection of priority conservation land at relatively modest system cost.
| Authors listed by journal | Cell Reports Sustainability | 2025
Maps the global overlap of wind and solar farms with protected areas, critical habitats, Indigenous lands and threatened vertebrate ranges.
| Rachel A. Neugarten et al. | Nature Communications | 2024
Maps globally important areas for biodiversity and nature's contributions to people and quantifies where renewable-energy potential overlaps with conservation priorities.
| OECD | OECD Publishing | 2024
Synthesizes evidence on biodiversity impacts from solar, wind, and power lines and recommends ways governments can mainstream biodiversity into renewable-power policy.
| Ben Jobson et al. | IUCN / The Biodiversity Consultancy | 2024
Compiles good-practice principles and case studies for creating biodiversity gains at wind and solar developments.
| Leon Bennun et al. | IUCN / The Biodiversity Consultancy | 2024
Provides guidance for cumulative biodiversity impact assessment across multiple wind and solar projects and associated infrastructure.
| Leon Bennun et al. | IUCN / The Biodiversity Consultancy | 2024
Offers a technical framework for biodiversity-sensitive spatial planning of wind, solar, grids, ports, and related infrastructure.
| Authors listed by journal | iScience | 2024
Proposes a Climate-Smart Siting framework that incorporates present and future species distributions into renewable-energy planning as climate change shifts habitat ranges.
| Authors listed by journal | Renewable Energy | 2024
Demonstrates how natural-capital values and spatial context can change the preferred locations of wind, solar and bioenergy infrastructure in Great Britain.
| Authors listed by journal | Journal of Environmental Management | 2024
Examines where solar farms are located within England's ecological landscape and finds that planning has generally directed projects toward already modified landscapes.
| Dafna Gilad et al. | Journal of Cleaner Production | 2024
Quantifies species-richness impacts associated with Norway's hydropower, wind generation and electricity grid, including habitat fragmentation from transmission.
| Leon Bennun et al. | IUCN | 2021
Provides comprehensive project-level guidance for applying the mitigation hierarchy to biodiversity impacts from solar, onshore wind, and offshore wind.
Highlights siting as the most important early step for avoiding severe biodiversity impacts from solar and wind projects.
| Authors listed by journal | Biological Conservation | 2021
Compares biodiversity consequences of alternative global electrification strategies and shows that land-sharing and land-sparing renewable technologies create different conservation trade-offs.
| José A. Rehbein et al. | Global Change Biology | 2020
Maps operating and planned renewable-energy facilities within protected areas, Key Biodiversity Areas, and remaining wilderness worldwide.
| Laura J. Sonter et al. | Nature Communications | 2020
Shows how mining for materials used in renewable-energy technologies can create new pressures on protected areas, wilderness, and biodiversity priorities.
| Santi Pratiwi and Nataly Juerges | Energy, Ecology and Environment | 2020
Systematically reviews environmental and conservation impacts of renewable-energy development in Southeast Asia, with hydropower, biofuels and geothermal among the most frequently reported sources of biodiversity pressure.
| Alexandros Gasparatos et al. | Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews | 2017
Reviews biodiversity impacts across solar, wind, hydropower, ocean, geothermal and bioenergy pathways, organizing them around habitat change, pollution, overexploitation, invasive species and climate change.
| Joseph W. Bull et al. | PLOS ONE | 2016
Assesses how biodiversity constraints affect realistic deployment potential for solar, wind, bioenergy, wave, and tidal renewable-energy technologies in the United Kingdom.
| Authors listed by journal | Journal of Environmental Management | 2015
Uses marine spatial planning to assess trade-offs among biodiversity conservation, fisheries and marine renewable-energy zones, including opportunities for co-location.
| Authors listed by journal | Renewable Energy | 2013
Presents a California desert siting method that prioritizes previously degraded land near existing infrastructure to reduce biological conflict from solar development.
Solar Energy, Ecovoltaics, Agrivoltaics, and Floating Solar
| U.S. Geological Survey | USGS | 2026
Summarizes federal research on utility-scale solar effects on migratory birds, terrestrial wildlife, plants, habitat, and conservation planning.
| U.S. Geological Survey | USGS | 2026
Reviews recent USGS findings on energy and wildlife, including native-plant responses and habitat changes at utility-scale solar facilities.
| Yahui Song et al. | Solar Energy | 2026
Models how floating photovoltaic coverage alters aquatic turbulence, water conditions, and phytoplankton responses.
| Authors listed by journal | Biological Conservation | 2026
Reports reduced bat activity at ground-mounted solar farms and examines how panel design and vegetation management alter responses.
| Claire C. Karban et al. | Applied Vegetation Science | 2026
Finds that low-impact solar arrays can either increase or decrease desert annual-plant diversity depending on soil and vegetation context.
| Authors listed by journal | Journal of Arid Environments | 2026
Finds that tracking photovoltaic arrays can create microhabitats that improve soil moisture, plant cover, and vegetation recovery in arid sandy lands.
| Authors listed by journal | Journal for Nature Conservation | 2026
Reports shifts in plant community composition and increased diversity associated with tracking photovoltaic systems in arid sandy landscapes.
| Authors listed by journal | Applied Energy | 2026
Reviews known and unknown biodiversity impacts of solar PV across raw-material sourcing, construction, operation, and end-of-life stages.
| Timothy J. Ohlert et al. | Environmental Research Communications / USGS | 2026
Finds that low-impact solar construction produced neutral to positive plant-diversity responses across several spatial scales in parts of the Mojave Desert.
| Juan Pinos et al. | Journal of Environmental Management | 2026
Measures microclimate and soil-moisture changes inside the Gemini ecovoltaic facility and documents both potentially beneficial and adverse habitat changes.
| Authors listed by journal | Journal of Environmental Management | 2026
Shows that native prairie restoration at a California photovoltaic site increased floral resources and pollinator diversity relative to weed-dominated controls.
| Authors listed by journal | Journal of Environmental Management | 2026
Examines above- and belowground community stability in a Qinghai-Tibetan solar park and finds different temporal responses by plant and microbial communities.
| Authors listed by journal | Biological Conservation | 2026
Analyzes bird community assembly across utility-scale solar farms and shows that responses vary by habitat guild, farm size and season.
| Louison Bienvenu et al. | Global Ecology and Conservation | 2026
Examines plant functional traits and ecological groups across French solar parks and shows how panel microhabitats and vegetation management filter plant communities.
| Authors listed by journal | Journal of Environmental Management | 2026
Measures solar-panel and management effects on soil mesofauna, respiration, and plant traits in southern France, highlighting belowground ecological responses.
| Authors listed by journal | PLOS ONE | 2026
Tests how agrivoltaic shading changes soil nutrients and microbial community structure in a wheat field under different panel configurations.
| Tom Armstrong et al. | Biological Reviews | 2026
Reviews how large-scale solar facilities create mosaics of light, temperature, moisture, and wind conditions that can produce different wildlife and biodiversity outcomes.
| U.S. Department of Energy | DOE | 2026
Explains agrivoltaic and dual-use solar approaches, including pollinator habitat and other land-management strategies intended to combine energy production with ecological and agricultural functions.
| Authors listed by journal | Earth System Science Data | 2026
Maps the rapid expansion of water-surface photovoltaics in China's Yangtze Delta, providing a high-resolution inventory useful for future ecological impact assessment.
| Emily Grabowsky et al. | Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife | 2025
Provides state guidelines for avoiding and minimizing fish, wildlife, and habitat impacts from utility-scale solar and onshore wind development.
| Authors listed by journal | Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews | 2025
Reviews documented impacts of solar facilities on fauna, including attraction, habitat change, community shifts, and potential mitigation opportunities.
| Hall Sawyer et al. | Ecological Solutions and Evidence | 2025
Uses before-and-after GPS data to show avoidance of utility-scale solar development by pronghorn and highlights the importance of movement corridors.
| Authors listed by journal | Journal of Environmental Management | 2025
Meta-analyzes terrestrial solar development and finds that ecosystem-function effects vary strongly by ecosystem and site selection.
| A. Ludzuweit et al. | Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews | 2025
Models habitat-enhancing agrivoltaic strategies and estimates gains in pollination, water retention, sediment retention, and carbon storage.
| Authors listed by repository | NERC Open Research Archive | 2025
Synthesizes hundreds of studies on solar-park impacts on ecosystem services and identifies where benefits, harms, and major evidence gaps occur.
| Authors listed by journal | Global Ecology and Conservation | 2025
Finds that bat activity at Midwestern ecovoltaic solar sites can exceed activity in adjacent agricultural controls during parts of the season.
| Authors listed by journal | Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment | 2025
Reports greater bird diversity around small solar installations in Polish farmland, while noting negative responses by skylarks.
| Leroy J. Walston et al. | Journal of Applied Ecology | 2025
Shows that ecovoltaic solar facilities planted and managed as habitat supported more grassland bird species than nearby row-crop fields.
| Lara Diekmann et al. | Ecology and Evolution | 2025
Examines bird use of a high-mounted agrivoltaic trial and finds that many common farmland birds continued to use the site, though open-landscape specialists responded differently.
| Authors listed by journal | Biological Conservation | 2025
Finds strong reductions in pollinator abundance and plant-pollinator interactions directly under panels in French solar parks and identifies management effects.
| Authors listed by journal | Environmental Research | 2025
Reviews agrivoltaic effects on crops, soil ecology, microclimate and microbial communities, highlighting ecological mechanisms relevant to biodiversity.
| Authors listed by journal | Energy Reports | 2025
Reviews agrivoltaic system designs and discusses how vertical and high-mounted configurations can reduce land conflict and create opportunities for biodiversity.
| Louison Bienvenu et al. | Applied Vegetation Science | 2025
Finds lower plant species richness directly beneath panels in southern French solar parks and shows that panel-created microhabitats can outweigh management effects.
| Timea Kocsis et al. | Journal of Applied Ecology | 2025
Compares Dutch solar parks with agricultural controls and finds mixed biodiversity responses, including gains in floral resources and some pollinators but declines in soil-emergent arthropods.
| U.S. Geological Survey | USGS | 2025
Describes ecological monitoring at the Gemini Solar Project, including vegetation, soils, microclimate, desert tortoise, and rare-plant responses to low-impact solar construction.
Reviews floating-photovoltaic effects on water temperature, light, oxygen, nutrients, algae, fish, microorganisms, and broader aquatic ecosystem functioning.
| Claire C. Karban et al. | Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews | 2024
Develops a trait-based framework for predicting solar-development impacts on plants and wildlife in the U.S. Desert Southwest.
| Benjamín Jarčuška et al. | Journal of Environmental Management | 2024
Finds that solar parks in agricultural landscapes can increase bird richness and diversity when they add habitat structure.
| Holly Blaydes et al. | Ecological Solutions and Evidence | 2024
Shows that floral richness and surrounding woody features influence pollinator abundance and richness at solar parks in England.
| Authors listed by journal | Next Sustainability | 2024
Maps global solar-energy potential against threatened bird ranges and evaluates the cost of adopting more biodiversity-friendly solar siting policies.
| Authors listed by journal | Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews | 2023
Reviews potential effects of floating photovoltaics on lake light regimes, temperature, oxygen, food webs, biodiversity, and ecosystem functioning.
| Authors listed by journal | Biological Conservation | 2023
Maps recent solar buildout around the Chesapeake Bay watershed and identifies opportunities to steer future facilities toward lower-conflict land-cover types.
| Authors listed by journal | Global Ecology and Conservation | 2023
Uses acoustic surveys to examine bat activity at solar farms and neighboring habitats and finds species-specific use of these novel landscapes.
| Alix Lafitte et al. | Environmental Evidence | 2023
Systematically maps evidence on photovoltaic effects on biodiversity and identifies major taxonomic and technology gaps, including floating solar and vertebrates.
| U.S. Geological Survey | USGS | 2023
Summarizes USGS research designed to quantify and mitigate wildlife effects from renewable-energy development, including wind and solar facilities.
| Markus Klemens Zaplata and Sandra Dullau | Land | 2022
Applies ecological-succession theory to bird communities in solar parks and discusses how management can improve conservation outcomes.
| Authors listed by journal | Ecological Engineering | 2022
Tests restoration methods in a French solar park and finds that panels can constrain recovery of reference grassland plant communities.
| Authors listed by journal | Journal of Environmental Management | 2022
Examines tenebrionid beetle communities in a Central Asian steppe and separates the ecological effects of grazing from those of solar-panel installation.
| U.S. Geological Survey | USGS | 2022
Integrates renewable-energy buildout projections with wildlife population ecology and habitat constraints to improve conservation-oriented energy planning.
| Holly Blaydes et al. | Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews | 2021
Systematically reviews management interventions that can make solar parks more valuable habitat for pollinators.
| Authors listed by journal | Diversity | 2021
Examines live and dead aquatic-habitat birds at photovoltaic facilities in Southern California to test aspects of the proposed solar 'lake effect.'
| Leon Bennun et al. | IUCN | 2021
Summarizes practical avoidance, minimization, restoration, and offset measures for biodiversity impacts across the solar-project life cycle.
| Authors listed by journal | Biological Conservation | 2021
Finds that solar development at Ivanpah reduced abundance and richness of non-bee flower-visiting insects compared with undeveloped Mojave Desert controls.
| Leroy J. Walston Jr. et al. | Ecosystem Services | 2021
Models ecosystem-service gains from native vegetation management at Midwestern solar facilities, including pollination, carbon storage, sediment retention, and water regulation.
| Leroy J. Walston Jr. et al. | PLOS ONE | 2020
Synthesizes bird-fatality monitoring from photovoltaic facilities in California and Nevada and discusses uncertainty around causes of mortality.
| Holly Blaydes et al. | Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews | 2020
Introduces an evidence-based decision-support approach for maximizing ecosystem-service co-benefits from solar-park design and management.
| U.S. Geological Survey | USGS | 2020
Reviews research on desert tortoise habitat use, translocation, connectivity, and conservation challenges associated with renewable-energy development in desert landscapes.
| Parikhit Sinha et al. | Case Studies in the Environment | 2018
Uses the Topaz Solar Farm in California to describe land-management practices intended to support biodiversity at utility-scale solar sites.
| Leroy J. Walston Jr. et al. | Environmental Science & Technology | 2018
Estimates where pollinator-friendly vegetation at U.S. solar facilities could support nearby pollinator-dependent crops and provide agricultural co-benefits.
| U.S. Geological Survey | USGS | 2018
Presents statistical approaches for estimating bird and bat fatalities and other wildlife effects at wind and solar facilities where carcass detection is imperfect.
| Manuela M. Huso, Thomas Dietsch and Chris Nicolai | U.S. Geological Survey | 2016
Provides a rigorous monitoring design for estimating bird and other wildlife mortality at utility-scale solar facilities.
| Jeffrey E. Lovich and Josua R. Ennen | BioScience / U.S. Geological Survey | 2011
Reviews potential wildlife effects of utility-scale solar development in the U.S. Desert Southwest, including habitat loss, fragmentation, altered microclimate and barriers to movement.
Onshore Wind, Birds, Bats, Insects, and Terrestrial Wildlife
| Silke Bauer et al. | Nature Sustainability | 2026
Uses large-scale migration information to examine how bird movements intersect with wind-energy production across Western Europe.
| Kate E. Mitchell and Paul R. Martin | Scientific Reports | 2026
Studies how wind turbines influence raptor distribution and abundance at an important migration and wintering site in Ontario.
| U.S. Department of Energy | DOE | 2026
Explains bird- and bat-related wind-energy risks and summarizes siting, monitoring, and operational mitigation approaches.
| U.S. Geological Survey | USGS | 2026
Summarizes USGS research on wind-energy interactions with bats, birds, habitat, behavior, and mitigation technologies.
| Michigan Department of Natural Resources | Michigan DNR | 2026
Recommends setbacks, corridor protection, forest avoidance, and post-construction monitoring for lower-conflict wind development.
| Authors listed by journal | Journal of Environmental Management | 2026
Uses 15 years of monitoring from Chilean wind farms to assess bird and bat fatalities, monitoring quality and use of mitigation measures.
| BirdLife International | BirdLife International | 2026
Explains how avian sensitivity mapping can steer wind development away from migration corridors and other high-risk bird areas.
| Authors listed by journal | Nature Reviews Biodiversity | 2025
Reviews onshore-wind impacts including wildlife fatalities, displacement, behavioral change, habitat loss, fragmentation, and mitigation.
| Renewable Energy Wildlife Institute | REWI | 2025
Compiles research on land-based wind interactions with wildlife and identifies priority questions for reducing impacts.
| Authors listed by journal | Biological Conservation | 2025
Finds that bat activity at ponds declines near wind turbines, indicating displacement from critical drinking and foraging habitat.
| Authors listed by journal | Journal of Environmental Management | 2025
Links ecological traits to bird and bat turbine mortality in Spain and maps areas where future wind development may pose higher assemblage-level risks.
| Authors listed by journal | Biological Conservation | 2025
Uses GPS-tracked red kites to show that collision risk increases with larger rotors and lower rotor-ground clearance.
| Authors listed by journal | Biological Conservation | 2025
Uses long-term GPS data from little bustards to model spatially explicit collision risk from wind turbines during breeding and migration.
| Authors listed by journal | Ecological Informatics | 2025
Introduces a spatial analytical approach for detecting seabird habitat loss and avoidance around offshore wind development using peripheral control areas.
| Authors listed by journal | Agronomy | 2025
Examines how wind-turbine density, vegetation, and soil conditions relate to insect abundance and diversity in a desert-steppe wind-energy landscape.
| Authors listed by journal | Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews | 2025
Develops a biodiversity-assessment framework that combines European bat data with wind-energy planning to identify spatially varying ecological risk.
| J. Morant et al. | Journal of Environmental Management | 2025
Maps bird and bat assemblage vulnerability to wind energy by combining species composition, ecological function, and mortality sensitivity.
| Irene Estellés-Domingo et al. | Animal Conservation | 2024
Reviews effects of wind farms on raptors and evaluates siting, operational, and technological measures intended to reduce harm.
| Michelle Weschler and Lusha Tronstad | PeerJ | 2024
Reviews evidence on insect attraction to wind turbines and identifies understudied pathways linking wind infrastructure to insect biodiversity.
| Michael D. Whitby et al. | Ecological Solutions and Evidence | 2024
Synthesizes a decade of North American studies showing how operational curtailment can reduce bat fatalities at wind turbines.
| Authors listed by journal | Journal of Environmental Management | 2024
Examines bird community composition and flight behavior around offshore wind farms near the Yellow Sea migratory-bird sanctuaries.
| Authors listed by journal | Biological Conservation | 2024
Shows that wind-turbine effects on bats depend strongly on the surrounding agricultural landscape and habitat structure.
| Christian C. Voigt et al. | BioScience | 2024
Reviews the global conflict between wind-energy expansion and bat conservation and emphasizes sensitive siting and activity-based curtailment.
| Authors listed by journal | Biological Conservation | 2023
Systematically reviews displacement distances of birds, bats, and terrestrial mammals around onshore wind development.
| Authors listed by journal | Current Biology | 2023
Shows that wind-energy production in forests can conflict with tree-roosting bats and emphasizes avoidance of sensitive forest habitat.
| Authors listed by journal | Scientific Reports | 2022
Examines bird and mammal responses to long-established wind farms in India, including collision mortality and community differences.
| Authors listed by journal | Journal of Wildlife Management | 2022
Tests operational curtailment and acoustic deterrents and finds that combining the two can substantially reduce bat mortality.
| Authors listed by journal | Biological Conservation | 2022
Identifies national priority areas where wind-energy development could be steered away from places of especially high bird-conservation value.
| Authors listed by journal | Global Ecology and Conservation | 2022
Uses long-term monitoring at older German turbines to show how facilities operating without curtailment can accumulate substantial bat fatalities over their lifetimes.
| Jin Lee, Sung-Soo Kim and Moon-Jeong Jang | Korean Journal of Environmental Biology | 2022
Compares insect communities in forest and wind-farm landscapes and documents changes in insect diversity and composition following onshore wind construction.
| Authors listed by publication | USGS / Wildlife Society Bulletin | 2022
Reviews the state of evidence on prairie grouse and wind energy and discusses implications for habitat-use studies and risk assessment.
| Leon Bennun et al. | IUCN | 2021
Summarizes avoidance, minimization, restoration, and compensation measures for reducing biodiversity impacts throughout the onshore-wind project life cycle.
| Authors listed by journal | Biological Conservation | 2021
Uses population modeling to test how reductions in wind-turbine fatalities could affect extinction risk for hoary bats under continued wind-energy expansion.
| Roel May et al. | Ecology and Evolution | 2020
Field-tests painting one turbine blade black and reports a large reduction in bird fatalities relative to unpainted control turbines.
| Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources | Ontario.ca | 2019
Provides guidance for identifying significant bat habitat, monitoring mortality, and reducing effects of wind turbines on bats.
| Matt Proett et al. | Journal of Wildlife Management | 2019
Examines Columbian sharp-tailed grouse nesting near a large wind complex and finds habitat variables were stronger predictors of nest selection and survival than turbine proximity.
| C.W. LeBeau et al. | Wildlife Society Bulletin | 2017
Uses long-term lek counts to examine whether greater sage-grouse male attendance changed in relation to wind-energy development.
| U.S. Geological Survey | USGS | 2017
Summarizes research used to improve golden-eagle risk assessment and management where energy infrastructure and other human activities overlap eagle habitat.
| New York State Department of Environmental Conservation | Tethys / NYSDEC | 2016
Provides methods for assessing bird and bat resources, estimating impacts, and designing mitigation at commercial wind projects.
| Authors listed by journal | Current Biology | 2016
Finds that preconstruction ecological impact assessments did not reliably predict bat casualties at wind farms and calls for stronger post-construction monitoring.
| Authors listed by study | Tethys / Wind Wildlife Research | 2016
Uses telemetry to evaluate greater sage-grouse habitat selection and population metrics around the Seven Mile Hill wind facility in southeastern Wyoming.
| Authors listed by journal | Environmental Impact Assessment Review | 2015
Reviews avoidance, reduction and compensation measures for wind-farm effects on bats in Europe.
| Laura E. Ellison | U.S. Geological Survey | 2012
Synthesizes research on bat mortality at wind facilities and identifies migratory, tree-roosting bats as a major conservation concern.
| J.M. Becker et al. | Pacific Northwest National Laboratory | 2009
Synthesizes greater sage-grouse ecology and the potential pathways through which wind-energy development could affect habitat use, disturbance, and populations.
Offshore Wind, Tidal, Wave, and Marine Renewable Energy
| Anthony W. J. Bicknell et al. | Frontiers in Marine Science | 2026
Finds increased biomass of some demersal fish near offshore-wind turbine foundations and discusses the fine-scale artificial-reef effect.
| Lena Hemery, Andrea Copping and K. Jones | Pacific Northwest National Laboratory | 2026
Synthesizes evidence on entanglement risk for fish, marine mammals, and sea turtles around mooring lines used by marine-energy and oceanographic devices.
Explains how organized environmental datasets can improve tidal-energy risk assessment for collision, noise, electromagnetic fields, habitat change, and other stressors.
| H.T. Harvey & Associates and Schatz Energy Research Center | MoorSEA | 2026
Develops environmental information for sensor systems intended to detect collision and entanglement risks around floating offshore-wind moorings.
| Lena Hemery, Andrea Copping and K. Jones | Pacific Northwest National Laboratory | 2026
Summarizes current evidence suggesting relatively low entanglement risk around standard marine-energy moorings while emphasizing remaining uncertainty.
| Emma Cotter et al. | PLOS ONE | 2026
Uses long-duration optical monitoring to document fish and other marine-animal interactions with a small tidal turbine, including observed collisions and avoidance behavior.
| NOAA Fisheries | NOAA | 2026
Summarizes offshore-wind pathways affecting marine life, including sound, electromagnetic fields, hydrodynamics, reef effects, vessel traffic, and contaminant release.
| Authors listed by journal | Ocean & Coastal Management | 2026
Develops an environmental risk register for marine-energy projects that links device components with habitat change, entanglement, noise, electromagnetic fields, contaminants, and ecological receptors.
| Stephen C. L. Watson et al. | Nature Reviews Biodiversity | 2025
Reviews offshore-wind effects on fish, invertebrates, seabirds, and marine mammals and evaluates monitoring and mitigation approaches.
| Liv Stranddorf et al. | International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment | 2025
Evaluates both biodiversity benefits and impacts of offshore-wind farms on benthic marine communities within a life-cycle assessment context.
| Su-Young Jeong et al. | Frontiers in Marine Science | 2025
Examines relationships among offshore-wind conditions, wave processes, and macrobenthic diversity and biomass in Korean coastal ecosystems.
| Authors listed by journal | Journal of Sea Research | 2025
Measures the spatial footprint of offshore-wind artificial-reef effects on soft-sediment benthic abundance, biomass, and diversity.
| Caitlin B. Harris et al. | Marine Pollution Bulletin | 2025
Reviews potential impacts of floating offshore wind on marine mammals and associated food-web interactions and identifies major evidence gaps.
| Authors listed by journal | Marine Policy | 2025
Assesses potential floating-offshore-wind pressures on policy-relevant marine species in the Gulf of Roses, Mediterranean Sea.
| OES-Environmental | Tethys | 2025
Introduces the principal environmental stressors from marine renewable energy, including collision, noise, electromagnetic fields, entanglement and habitat change.
| Anthony W. J. Bicknell et al. | Marine Environmental Research | 2025
Finds site- and species-dependent increases in demersal fish abundance and biomass around offshore-wind turbine foundations.
| Authors listed by journal | Fisheries Research | 2025
Uses optical monitoring to compare fish distributions around offshore-wind foundations with natural and shipwreck reefs in a subtropical system.
| P. Wawrzynkowski, A. Sabatés and J. Lloret | Marine Environmental Research | 2025
Uses species traits to assess vulnerability of commercially important Mediterranean fishes to floating offshore-wind development.
| J. Werry and J. Meager | Marine Environmental Research | 2025
Assesses offshore-wind risks to Australian sharks and rays, including displacement, attraction, electromagnetic fields, underwater noise, and habitat change.
| I. Gutierrez, F. Kershaw and B. Loomis | The Biodiversity Consultancy | 2025
Provides recommendations for reducing entanglement risks to marine mammals and sea turtles from floating offshore-wind moorings and associated gear.
| S. Lee et al. | California Energy Commission / Aspen Environmental Group | 2025
Maps environmental, fisheries, navigation, legal, and recreation considerations that affect suitable sea space for wave and tidal energy.
| N. Dorrian, E. Ferguson and L. Scala | Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult | 2025
Reviews marine-mammal monitoring methods and emerging technologies relevant to detecting and managing offshore renewable-energy impacts.
| The Biodiversity Consultancy | The Biodiversity Consultancy | 2025
Summarizes whale-related offshore-wind concerns, including construction noise, vessel strikes, habitat displacement, and entanglement, and outlines mitigation options.
| Andrea Copping et al. | Marine Renewable Energy Research | 2025
Reviews potential environmental effects of emerging technologies such as ocean thermal and salinity-gradient energy and discusses management implications.
| OES-Environmental | Ocean Energy Systems | 2025
Provides evidence-based guidance for assessing and managing entanglement risks associated with marine renewable-energy devices and mooring systems.
| E. Phillips, S. Wren, G. King and E. San Martin | Tidal Stream Energy Project | 2025
Compiles collision-risk evidence for marine mammals, seabirds, fish, and other organisms interacting with tidal-stream turbines.
| C. Gallego-Ramírez et al. | Marine Renewable Energy Research | 2025
Assesses environmental and sustainability pressures across the design, installation, operation, and decommissioning stages of an oscillating-water-column wave-energy system.
| M. Severy, H. Farr, M. Richlen et al. | Tethys / Gulf Offshore Wind Research | 2025
Compiles research-based educational summaries on the potential environmental effects of offshore wind in the Gulf of Mexico.
| K. Nielsen, B. Robertson, J. Sierman et al. | Floating Offshore Wind Research | 2025
Reviews floating-wind infrastructure and the ecological stressors associated with anchors, moorings, cables, turbines, vessel activity, and offshore substations.
| B. McKinlay, A. van Helden and G. Taylor | New Zealand Offshore Wind Research | 2025
Reviews potential effects on marine mammals, seabirds, fish, reptiles, and habitats at three prospective offshore-wind locations in Aotearoa New Zealand.
| S. Hallowell, D. Brady and E. Rzeszowski | Floating Offshore Wind Research | 2025
Quantifies how derelict fishing gear could create secondary entanglement risk when it becomes caught on floating offshore-wind moorings.
| Lena Hemery, Andrea Copping and K. Jones | Pacific Northwest National Laboratory | 2025
Shows how place-based environmental and stakeholder questions can be incorporated into marine-energy siting and permitting decisions.
| Whale Communications Committee | Offshore Wind and Whale Research | 2025
Provides an evidence-based overview of questions surrounding offshore wind, whale distribution, underwater noise, vessel activity, and entanglement.
| E. Mul | Marine Ecosystem Accounting Research | 2025
Examines how marine ecosystem accounting could be applied to the Hywind Tampen floating offshore-wind development to track ecological condition and change.
| A. Sandzen, T. Bakhsh and H. MacDonald | Floating Offshore Wind Research | 2025
Reviews approaches for improving coexistence between fisheries and floating offshore wind, including design, access, engagement, and entanglement considerations.
| K. Indeck, M. Baumgartner, L. Lecavalier et al. | Marine Mammal Science | 2025
Evaluates autonomous acoustic gliders for near-real-time detection of North Atlantic right whales and dynamic spatial management around offshore activities.
| Authors listed by journal | Science of the Total Environment | 2025
Describes autonomous Sensor Fish systems for measuring pressure, shear, acceleration, and collision conditions around marine-energy and hydropower turbines.
| Authors listed by journal | Cleaner Environmental Systems | 2025
Conducts a cradle-to-grave life-cycle assessment of a point-absorber wave-energy converter and identifies materials, cables, and vessel operations as major environmental contributors.
| Authors listed by journal | Journal of Environmental Management | 2025
Maps Mediterranean opportunities for co-locating offshore wind, wave energy, and aquaculture while evaluating overlap with Natura 2000 areas and sensitive seagrass ecosystems.
| Authors listed by journal | Environmental Impact Assessment Review | 2024
Synthesizes evidence for displacement and attraction of marine birds after offshore-wind construction and recommends stronger study designs.
| Authors listed by journal | Frontiers in Marine Science | 2024
Presents a framework for studying collision, displacement, attraction, and habitat-mediated effects of offshore wind on birds and bats.
| Authors listed by journal | Science of the Total Environment | 2024
Systematically reviews how marine wind farms affect local marine biodiversity, including invertebrates and demersal fish.
| OES-Environmental | Ocean Energy Systems / Tethys | 2024
Provides a global state-of-the-science assessment of environmental effects from tidal, wave and other marine renewable-energy technologies.
| L. Garavelli et al. | PNNL / Ocean Energy Systems | 2024
Organizes marine-energy evidence around stressor-receptor interactions affecting fish, invertebrates, mammals, birds and ecosystem processes.
| Andrea E. Copping et al. | Marine Technology Society Journal / PNNL | 2024
Compares environmental monitoring at marine-energy projects around the world and recommends greater standardization of methods and analysis.
| Lijing Wang et al. | Journal of Environmental Sciences | 2024
Reviews offshore-wind effects across marine trophic levels, including plankton, benthos, fish and mammals, and discusses food-web consequences.
| B. Ruttenberg, Y. Wang, R. Walter et al. | California Offshore Renewable Energy Research | 2024
Explores scenarios for replacing conventional energy with offshore renewable generation along California's central coast and examines spatial environmental and fisheries trade-offs.
| Authors listed by journal | Science of the Total Environment | 2023
Examines how environmental effects may scale from individual marine-energy devices to large commercial arrays.
| Bureau of Ocean Energy Management | BOEM | 2023
Describes research testing nature-inclusive scour and cable-protection materials designed to encourage epifaunal growth and enhance fish habitat around offshore-wind infrastructure.
| NOAA Fisheries | NOAA | 2023
Provides technical guidance for assessing offshore-wind effects on endangered species, marine mammals, fisheries, critical habitat, and marine and estuarine ecosystems.
| Authors listed by journal | Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews | 2022
Introduces an ecological-risk framework for wave-energy projects that evaluates physical disturbance, habitat loss, hydrological change, noise, and effects on fish and marine habitats.
| Andrea Copping et al. | Biological Conservation | 2021
Reviews evidence on collision, noise, electromagnetic fields, habitat change and displacement risks to fish from marine renewable-energy devices.
| Authors listed by journal | Renewable Energy | 2021
Uses telemetry to show harbor-seal avoidance during tidal-turbine operation and explores implications for collision-risk estimates.
| Andrea Copping and Lena Hemery, eds. | Ocean Energy Systems / PNNL | 2020
Reviews the global evidence base for environmental effects of wave and tidal energy and identifies major remaining uncertainties.
| Authors listed by journal | Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews | 2019
Quantifies how tidal-device noise can reduce the acoustic listening space available to harbor seals and harbor porpoises.
| Authors listed by journal | Renewable Energy | 2019
Finds that a tidal-turbine support structure altered the presence, size and vertical distribution of fish schools in a high-energy tidal site.
| Andrea Copping et al. | International Journal of Marine Energy | 2017
Combines behavior, biomechanics and engineering information to evaluate the potential injury risk of marine-mammal collisions with tidal turbines.
| Eva Schuster et al. | Environmental Management | 2015
Synthesizes the state of knowledge on wind-energy effects on bats, birds, raptors, migratory species, and marine mammals.
| Andrea E. Copping et al. | Ocean & Coastal Management | 2014
Synthesizes international evidence on marine-energy effects, with emphasis on turbine collision, underwater sound and changes to physical ocean processes.
| Authors listed by journal | Environmental Impact Assessment Review | 2012
Reviews habitat, species, recruitment, hydrodynamic, noise, and electromagnetic-field effects associated with tidal barrages, tidal-stream systems, and wave-energy devices.
Transmission Lines, Grid Corridors, and Rights-of-Way
| National Audubon Society | Audubon | 2026
Summarizes bird-sensitive clean-energy planning, including co-locating transmission with existing rights-of-way and avoiding important habitats.
| Authors listed by article | Peer-Reviewed Systematic Review | 2026
Reviews technologies for detecting bird interactions with power lines and identifies a persistent monitoring gap for transmission-line collision applications.
| Authors listed by journal | Journal of Industrial Ecology | 2024
Develops life-cycle impact-assessment models for bird collision and electrocution from Norwegian power lines, connecting grid infrastructure with biodiversity accounting.
| Authors listed by journal | Nature Conservation | 2024
Assesses the potential for transportation and utility rights-of-way in France to function as ecological refuges when vegetation is managed for biodiversity.
| Authors listed by journal | Perspectives in Ecology and Conservation | 2023
Reviews power-line collision and electrocution threats to birds in South America and identifies major geographic and monitoring gaps.
| Authors listed by journal | Sustainability | 2022
Finds that suburban power-line corridors managed as prairie or old field can support more plants, pollinators, and birds than corridors maintained as lawn.
| Authors listed by journal | Biological Conservation | 2021
Documents high bird mortality along power lines in a tropical desert and argues for urgent regional mitigation and route planning.
| Peter G. Ryan et al. | Ornithological Applications | 2021
Reports a large South African experiment showing that line marking reduced collisions for several large terrestrial birds, although effectiveness varied among taxa.
| Authors listed by article | PLOS ONE | 2021
Shows that power-line rights-of-way can support diverse bee and other flower-visiting insect communities when vegetation management avoids intensive mowing and herbicide use.
| Authors listed by journal | Journal of Environmental Management | 2020
Reassesses the effectiveness of wire marking and identifies design improvements needed for stronger post-construction collision monitoring.
| Authors listed by journal | Global Ecology and Conservation | 2020
Uses dedicated avian radar to test how birds alter flight behavior around marked and unmarked high-voltage power lines.
| Authors listed by journal | Biological Conservation | 2018
Systematically reviews bird collisions with power lines, risk factors and mitigation tools such as routing, undergrounding and wire marking.
| Larissa Biasotto et al. | Environmental Impact Assessment Review | 2018
Identifies 28 documented biodiversity impacts from transmission-line construction and operation and highlights gaps for low-mobility taxa.
| Authors listed by journal | Biological Conservation | 2014
Develops a spatially explicit method for mapping bird collision risk with overhead lines using the little bustard as a case study.
| Authors listed by journal | International Journal of Biodiversity and Conservation | 2014
Reviews how power lines and their rights-of-way affect ungulates through habitat change, forage creation, disturbance, movement, and predator interactions.
| Rafael Barrientos et al. | PLOS ONE | 2012
Uses a before-after-control-impact design to show that wire marking produced a small but significant reduction in bird mortality along power lines.
| Rafael Barrientos et al. | Conservation Biology | 2011
Meta-analyzes the effectiveness of wire marking and finds that flight diverters generally reduce avian collisions with power lines.
| Kjetil Bevanger | Biological Conservation | 1998
Reviews biological traits that make birds vulnerable to power-line collisions or electrocution and notes risks to threatened species.
| Authors listed by journal | Biological Conservation | 1996
Examines common tern responses to power lines and shows how breeding status, age and wind conditions can influence collision risk.
| Authors listed by journal | Biological Conservation | 1994
Evaluates marking overhead groundwires as a mitigation measure for reducing bird collisions with transmission lines.
Hydropower, Fish Passage, River Biodiversity, and Pumped Storage
| Authors listed by journal | Communications Earth & Environment | 2026
Experimental work shows how hydropeaking intensity, timing, and temperature can strand or displace larval and juvenile fish.
| Authors listed by journal | Communications Earth & Environment | 2026
Provides a global assessment of dam exposure for threatened fish, mollusks, amphibians, odonates, and freshwater mammals.
| Authors listed by journal | Journal of Environmental Management | 2026
Combines environmental DNA and historical records to evaluate how cascade dams changed fish richness and functional diversity in the Jinsha River.
| Authors listed by journal | Ecological Informatics | 2026
Uses ecohydraulic modeling to quantify habitat and migration effects of hydropeaking on European grayling and brown trout.
| Authors listed by journal | Ecological Engineering | 2026
Tests hydropeaking mitigation scenarios and finds that slower downramping combined with morphological measures can sharply reduce larval fish stranding.
| Authors listed by journal | Journal of Environmental Management | 2026
Quantifies how daily hydropeaking exposes lithophilous fish eggs and identifies water-level fluctuation thresholds relevant to spawning protection.
| Authors listed by journal | Global Ecology and Conservation | 2026
Uses environmental DNA to characterize fish diversity and community composition across a cascade-dammed river in the upper Yangtze basin.
| Authors listed by journal | Environmental DNA | 2026
Compares eDNA metabarcoding with traditional fishing to characterize temporal fish diversity in a Neotropical hydropower reservoir.
| Authors listed by journal | CLEAN – Soil, Air, Water | 2026
Meta-analyzes low-head-dam effects on river biodiversity and shows that climate variables can amplify or modify responses of fish, algae, and macroinvertebrates.
Describes research on pumped-storage hydropower effects on reservoir physics, fish populations, and mitigation options in Norwegian reservoirs.
| Authors listed by journal | Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries | 2025
Reviews how sub-daily flow variability from hydropower affects riverine fish habitat, diversity, behavior, and demographic processes.
| Xiongfeng Bai et al. | Journal of Hydrology | 2025
Shows that dam-related connectivity loss can outweigh climate-change effects on fish habitat in China's Jinsha River basin.
| Authors listed by journal | Animals | 2025
Evaluates hydropower-driven fragmentation in the Dongjiang River and identifies dam-passability thresholds relevant to fish-diversity restoration.
| Authors listed by journal | Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews | 2025
Presents a framework for turbine replacement and hydropower modernization designed to improve fish passage while maintaining generation.
| Authors listed by journal | Biological Conservation | 2025
Systematically maps evidence for hydropower impacts on semi-aquatic megafauna such as otters, turtles, and crocodilians.
| Authors listed by journal | Environmental Impact Assessment Review | 2025
Develops global life-cycle characterization factors for fish biodiversity impacts caused by dam-induced freshwater fragmentation.
| Authors listed by journal | Nature Reviews Earth & Environment | 2024
Reviews hydropower effects on river connectivity, flow, sediment, temperature, floodplains, and aquatic and semi-aquatic biodiversity.
| Authors listed by journal | One Earth | 2024
Shows how coordinated dam removal, retrofits, fishways, and future planning could reduce fish-habitat fragmentation in the Lower Mekong.
| Authors listed by journal | Science of the Total Environment | 2024
Systematically reviews ecological effects of hydropeaking, including flow, temperature, sediment, fish, benthos, and riparian vegetation.
| Authors listed by journal | Journal of Environmental Management | 2024
Finds that baseline biodiversity and river position influence how macroinvertebrate communities respond to small hydropower development.
| Authors listed by journal | Nature Communications | 2024
Shows that Southern Africa can avoid many high-impact hydropower, wind, and solar sites with relatively modest power-system cost increases.
| Authors listed by journal | Journal of Environmental Management | 2024
Uses longitudinal sampling to evaluate aquatic-community responses to small hydropower under ecological-flow requirements.
| Authors listed by journal | Journal of Environmental Management | 2024
Finds that small hydropower alters macroinvertebrate communities differently upstream, in impounded reaches, and downstream even when ecological flows are maintained.
| Authors listed by journal | Scientific Reports | 2023
Uses long-term monitoring to link dam development with declines in fish biodiversity in Mekong tributaries.
| Authors listed by journal | Water | 2023
Reviews hydropower threats to Mekong fish biodiversity, including migration barriers, hydrological alteration, and risks to endemic and threatened species.
| Authors listed by journal | Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews | 2023
Reviews fish-passage risks from in-stream turbines and identifies design and operational characteristics that can reduce injury and mortality.
| Peng Gu et al. | Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution | 2022
Assesses fish, benthos, plankton, and microbial diversity around small hydropower stations in the upper Yangtze region.
| Authors listed by journal | River Research and Applications | 2022
Links altered flows from a small hydropower project in India's Western Ghats with changes in fish assemblages and ecological connectivity.
| Authors listed by journal | Science of the Total Environment | 2022
Shows that hydropeaking alters the spatial behavior of actively spawning rheophilic fish and can interrupt reproduction.
| Authors listed by publication | U.S. Geological Survey | 2022
Identifies practices across hydropower siting, design, construction, operation, and compensation that can reduce impacts on inland fish and fisheries.
| Ana Filipa Palmeirim and Luke Gibson | Communications Biology | 2021
Quantifies how hydropower-reservoir inundation has affected habitat within the global ranges of jaguars and tigers.
| Authors listed by journal | Science of the Total Environment | 2021
Finds substantial declines in macroinvertebrate abundance under hydropeaking and shows that geomorphology modifies ecosystem response.
| Dirk A. Algera et al. | Environmental Evidence | 2020
Systematically reviews fish injury and mortality during downstream passage at hydroelectric dams and compares turbines, spillways, bypasses, and other routes.
| Günther Grill et al. | Nature | 2019
Maps the world's remaining free-flowing rivers and identifies dams and reservoirs as the leading contributors to loss of river connectivity.
| Haipeng Wu et al. | Journal of Cleaner Production | 2019
Reviews dam-construction effects across microorganisms, benthos, plankton, fish, plants, birds and aquatic mammals.
| Philip M. Harrison et al. | Fish and Fisheries | 2019
Reviews turbine entrainment of potadromous fish and emphasizes population-level consequences that may extend beyond immediate passage mortality.
| Emilio F. Moran et al. | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences | 2018
Reviews environmental and social costs of large hydropower and argues for more sustainable alternatives and dam-management practices.
| Authors listed by journal | Science of the Total Environment | 2017
Models how hydropeaking changes fish and macroinvertebrate habitat and reduces access to benthic feeding areas in Alpine streams.
| Authors listed by journal | Science of the Total Environment | 2017
Presents a conceptual framework for evaluating structural and operational measures designed to mitigate hydropeaking impacts.
| Brenda M. Pracheil et al. | Oak Ridge National Laboratory | 2016
Synthesizes understanding of biological responses to turbine passage, including pressure, shear, strike, turbine type, and species-specific vulnerability.
| A.V. Crew, B.E. Keatley and A.M. Phelps | Government of Canada | 2013
Reviews fish mortality mechanisms and international regulatory approaches for downstream passage through hydroelectric facilities.
| M. Bonalumi et al. | Water Resources Research | 2011
Shows how pumped-storage operation alters temperature, turbidity, suspended particles, and sediment dynamics in connected high-Alpine reservoirs.
| Authors listed by journal | Acta Ecologica Sinica | 2008
Examines macroinvertebrate communities around cascade small-hydropower plants and reports especially strong ecological change where streamflow is heavily diverted.
| Carl R. Schilt | Applied Animal Behaviour Science | 2007
Reviews behavioral approaches to fish passage and protection at hydropower dams, including guidance, bypass, migration barriers, and predation risk.
| Charles C. Coutant and Richard R. Whitney | Transactions of the American Fisheries Society | 2000
Reviews fish behavior, orientation, and flow cues relevant to turbine passage and the design of safer hydropower systems.
Bioenergy, Biomass, and Biodiversity
| Authors listed by journal | One Earth | 2026
Maps global energy-crop potential after jointly constraining land for food security, biodiversity and ecosystem carbon storage.
| Authors listed by journal | Fuel | 2026
Reviews global biomass-to-energy pathways and discusses environmental risks including land conversion, water impacts and biodiversity change.
| European Commission Knowledge Centre for Biodiversity | Knowledge4Policy | 2025
Summarizes evidence on biodiversity risks from bioenergy, biofuels, forest biomass, and land-use change in a European policy context.
| Authors listed by journal | GCB Bioenergy | 2023
Reviews biodiversity and ecosystem-service trade-offs from bioenergy crops in temperate agricultural landscapes.
| Nathan L. Haan et al. | Science Advances | 2023
Compares biodiversity across ten bioenergy cropping systems and finds that structurally complex perennial polycultures support substantially richer communities than annual maize.
| Authors listed by journal | Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews | 2022
Examines how dedicated bioenergy crops create synergies and trade-offs among climate mitigation, biodiversity, water, soil, food, and other sustainability goals.
| Authors listed by journal | Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews | 2022
Reviews forest-bioenergy pathways through both climate and biodiversity lenses and distinguishes potential win-win options from clearly harmful pathways.
| Sophie Jane Tudge et al. | Biodiversity and Conservation | 2021
Globally synthesizes local biodiversity responses to first- and second-generation biofuel crops and highlights strong effects of land conversion.
| Authors listed by journal | Biological Conservation | 2021
Uses spatial planning to show how Brazil could reduce the biodiversity and carbon impacts of biofuel-driven agricultural expansion.
| Authors listed by journal | Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment | 2020
Examines ant biodiversity and ecosystem services across bioenergy crop landscapes and evaluates the conservation value of perennial feedstocks.
| Authors listed by journal | Global Ecology and Conservation | 2019
Develops landscape-scale recommendations for co-producing biomass energy and wildlife habitat across North and South American production systems.
| Authors listed by journal | Journal of Environmental Management | 2018
Synthesizes evidence from 279 studies on logging-residue extraction for energy and its effects on biodiversity and ecosystem services.
| Authors listed by journal | Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews | 2017
Reviews bioenergy buffers and their potential to provide biomass while supporting biodiversity, soil health, water quality, and other ecosystem services.
| Authors listed by journal | Ecosystem Services | 2017
Reviews ways bioenergy policy can be structured to reward habitat provision, soil improvement, water regulation, and other ecosystem-service benefits.
| Johnny de Jong and Anders Dahlberg | Forest Ecology and Management | 2017
Reviews effects of forest biomass harvesting on species of conservation interest and discusses when residue removal may add to biodiversity loss.
| Authors listed by journal | European Journal of Wildlife Research | 2017
Shows that the biodiversity value of Miscanthus for brown hares depends on spatial scale, with small patches offering refuge but large dense blocks reducing food availability and permeability.
| D. Phillips et al. | Bioresource Technology | 2016
Evaluates biomass generated through conservation management as a potential energy feedstock, linking habitat management with local bioenergy supply.
| Alison J. Haughton et al. | GCB Bioenergy | 2016
Reports that dedicated biomass crops such as Miscanthus and short-rotation willow can support greater plant and invertebrate diversity than conventional arable crops.
| Peter J. Blank et al. | Ecological Applications | 2016
Models alternative bioenergy-crop scenarios and shows that bird-community outcomes depend on whether perennial energy crops replace row crops or existing grasslands and on their spatial arrangement.
| Desirée J. Immerzeel et al. | GCB Bioenergy | 2014
Reviews how energy-crop production affects biodiversity and identifies management measures that can reduce harm or create benefits.
| Ben P. Werling et al. | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences | 2014
Finds that perennial grassland bioenergy systems can enhance multiple biodiversity groups and ecosystem services relative to annual row-crop systems.
| Authors listed by journal | Biomass and Bioenergy | 2013
Assesses whether European energy-crop expansion can be compatible with biodiversity and identifies both habitat risks and opportunities.
| Authors listed by journal | Biological Conservation | 2012
Models competition between tropical forest conservation incentives and conversion to bioenergy plantations under alternative economic assumptions.
| Robert J. Fletcher Jr. et al. | Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment | 2011
Meta-analyzes biodiversity responses to biofuel crops and discusses risks, opportunities, and management strategies for wildlife.
Projects bird-community changes under alternative Upper Midwest bioenergy landscapes and finds perennial feedstocks generally perform better for birds than expanded annual crops.
| Donald P. Christian et al. | Biomass and Bioenergy | 1994
Discusses how large-scale biomass tree plantations can alter habitat quality and biodiversity depending on the land use they replace.
Geothermal Energy and Biodiversity
| Ibrahim Kipngeno Rotich et al. | Energy for Sustainable Development | 2024
Reviews geothermal development in Kenya and discusses land disturbance, pollution, water use, wildlife and biodiversity concerns alongside health impacts.
| Authors listed by journal | Science of the Total Environment | 2024
Uses aquatic macroinvertebrates to test ecological effects of treated spent geothermal water discharged into a river.
| Authors listed by journal | MethodsX | 2023
Presents a modeling framework for estimating greater sage-grouse population responses to geothermal energy development in Nevada.
| Ivannia Sandoval-Castro et al. | Environmental Conservation | 2023
Examines insectivorous bats around artificial forest clearings created for a Costa Rican geothermal project and finds strong edge-related changes in activity and community composition.
| Authors listed by journal | Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews | 2021
Reviews environmental, economic and social impacts of geothermal energy, including land use, water consumption, emissions and site-specific biodiversity risks.
| Daniel H. Janzen et al. | Genome | 2020
Uses DNA-barcoded Malaise-trap samples to monitor insect biodiversity during construction of a geothermal project beside Costa Rica's Área de Conservación Guanacaste.
| Abrahams John Getonto | Kenyatta University | 2018
Compares bird communities near and far from geothermal infrastructure in Hell's Gate National Park, Kenya, and reports lower richness in more disturbed habitats.
| Peter Bayer et al. | Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews | 2013
Reviews life-cycle environmental effects of geothermal generation, including land fragmentation, water use and risks to unique geothermal ecosystems.
