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Bird deaths down 70 percent after painting wind turbine blades:
Something as simple as black paint could be the key to reducing the number of birds that are killed each year by wind turbines. According to a study conducted at a wind farm on the Norwegian archipelago of Smøla, changing the color of a single blade on a turbine from white to black resulted in a 70-percent drop in the number of bird deaths.
Not everyone is a fan of wind turbines, however, because of their impact on local populations of flying fauna like birds and bats.
[...] Previous laboratory studies have suggested that birds may not be very good at seeing obstructions while they're flying, and adding visual cues like different colored fan blades can increase birds' chances of spotting a rapidly rotating fan.
[...] And so, in 2013, each of the four turbines in the test group had a single blade painted black. In the three years that followed, only six birds were found dead due to striking their turbine blades. By comparison, 18 bird deaths were recorded by the four control wind turbines—a 71.9-percent reduction in the annual fatality rate.
Digging into the data a little more showed some variation on bird deaths depending upon the season. During spring and autumn, fewer bird deaths were recorded at the painted turbines. But in summer, bird deaths actually increased at the painted turbines, and the authors note that the small number of turbines in the study and its relatively short duration both merit longer-term replication studies, both at Smøla and elsewhere.
Journal Reference:
Roel May, Torgeir Nygård, Ulla Falkdalen, et al. Paint it black: Efficacy of increased wind turbine rotor blade visibility to reduce avian fatalities [open], Ecology and Evolution (DOI: 10.1002/ece3.6592)
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday August 28 2020, @05:29PM (3 children)
Well sure it matters in fog or if you're off course enough. Also the lighted and painted towers are great navigation points on aviation maps.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday August 28 2020, @05:48PM (2 children)
Ahh.., I guess they're a lot taller than I imagined. Still, doing course corrections for something 300 to 700 feet off the ground, when your average cruising height is 30k feet. Sounds to me like something catastrophic had happened already. Still, if you had a breath of a chance to lay it down on it's belly, it'd be best not to do so in a field of Wind Turbines.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday September 01 2020, @12:54PM (1 child)
Yeah in the civilized east. Out west in the mountains this is an issue.
The problem is electrical companies, given infinitely cheap land, would make the most money building generation downtown right where its used, and same pressure pushes airports to be next to the city. So plenty of planes fly in close proximity to farms. Planes have been flying around radio transmitter towers and water towers and smoke stacks for decades.
"In theory" using ultra high voltage DC transmission lines we could power NYC from a wind farm in Wyoming, but in practice its shorter range.
Well, where I live, plenty of farmers rent out their land for windmills, so ironically if you want a tree free essentially unpopulated mechanically leveled nearly perfectly flat for a mile around spot for an emergency landing, the best place is the wind farm. I mean, don't aim right at the tower itself, duh, but that field in general is probably the safest spot for miles around. So yeah more than a few general aviation little putt putt airplanes have landed at the local wind farm after an engine failure. Its a better spot than most.
I mean, heck, even the wind is generally constant and predictable at the wind farm WRT emergency landings, that's why the farm is there.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday September 02 2020, @04:27PM
I was meaning a 747 (which is what you suggested), a 747 isn't a puddle jumper that can land in a place like that. Sure, a small plane could land just about anywhere there's a nice flat surface.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"