The InTAS project develops an integrated analysis framework to utilise both survey data and telemetry data to consider differences in age distributions of seabirds and better estimate potential impacts of offshore renewable developments.
Overview
The UK hosts internationally important numbers of breeding seabirds, many of which are declining. These species are vulnerable to a range of pressures including climate change, fisheries and renewable energy developments. The InTAS project’s objective was to improve apportioning methods to be able to correctly apportion the effects of potential disturbance at sea to individual seabird colonies, accounting for non-breeders. This adds to previous ORJIP project experience on the topic of apportioning – Improving methods for apportioning seabirds seen at sea, both in the breeding season and non-breeding season (AppSAS).
The project evaluated seabird species based on their vulnerability to offshore wind farm development, availability and quality of data and level of analytical challenge. Species selected for integration were northern gannet, black-legged kittiwake, common guillemot and razorbill.
Once selected, the integrated approach was implemented on the four species to derive distribution maps by species, colony and breeding stage. For individual species, the project:
- Analysed patterns of spatial utilisation by the species.
- Deduced which environmental variables are primarily driving the distribution.
- Generated reconstructions of spatial usage by different colonies and age classes.
- Demonstrated apportionment results with associated credible intervals for a particular area of development.
- Encoded the above in reproducible code so that the data, covariates and areas of interest can be altered, allowing the analysis to be re-run expediently.
