Cross-cutting principles for planetary health education

Since the 2015 launch of the Rockefeller Foundation Lancet Commission on planetary health,1 an enormous groundswell of interest in planetary health education has emerged across many disciplines, institutions, and geographical regions. Advancing these global efforts in planetary health education will equip the next generation of scholars to address crucial questions in this emerging field and support the development of a community of practice. To provide a foundation for the growing interest and efforts in this field, the Planetary Health Alliance has facilitated the first attempt to create a set of principles for planetary health education that intersect education at all levels, across all scales, and in all regions of the world—ie, a set of cross-cutting principles

Seabed communities

This review of published and unpublished information demonstrates that offshore wind farms (OWFs) have major effects on the benthos; that is, the seabed flora and fauna. By adding artificial hard substrata to the marine ecosystem, OWFs create new habitat for colonising benthic species, allowing attachment and attraction of hard-substratum species, in ‘the artificial reef effect’. The general exclusion of fisheries further creates flourishing soft-sediment benthic communities. Although wind farms hardly extend the distribution range of hard-substratum species, they may be stepping stones for non-indigenous and nuisance species. Such an increase in benthic diversity, however, is countered by the loss of, disturbance to and/or alteration of the natural seabed. Despite this, it may be concluded that OWFs create local hotspots of benthic diversity, directly influencing the local marine food web. During construction, the biomass of forage species decreases, affecting predatory and scavenging species negatively and positively, respectively. Mobile predatory species tend to leave the area during construction. Once installed, the flourishing benthic communities greatly increase in benthic foraging species and attract predators. The surrounding natural sediments are affected by the deposition of organic matter from the epibionts on the turbine monopoles and scour protection and by the altered predator community. Given that a new ecological equilibrium in the benthic system will develop over 20–30 years, it is arguable whether a return to the pre-construction state following full decommissioning would be feasible or desirable. In contrast, a ‘renewables-to-reefs’ decommissioning scheme involving only partial removal of the wind farm could ensure protection for ecologically valuable sites. While many data already exist, it is difficult to detect significant effects because these are proportional to the degree of change and the changes may take place at different spatial scales. This should be taken into account in OWF monitoring. Benthic communities are of significant ecological and socio-economic importance at a global level. This includes acting as habitat for numerous species at all life-cycle stages, and as a feeding ground for a range of predators. From a socio-economic perspective, these predators can include species of commercial importance. Benthic communities operate both directly and indirectly as food resources for such species. Therefore, the study of the benthic environment around any activity in the marine environment, including offshore renewable energy, is vital to identify potential effects and their significance. All human activities in the marine environment have the potential, by their very nature, to affect its natural structure and functioning. Because of both the direct effects on the seabed and the intimate links between the water column and benthos (Gray & Elliott 2009), the seabed will always be directly or indirectly affected. The effects of offshore wind farms (OWFs) on seabed communities comprise one of the most important elements when considering the potential impacts of such developments, due to the inevitability of effects arising, especially from monopiles bored into the substratum or gravity supported on the seabed, their surrounding erosion protection layer and the installation of cable routes (Wilson et al. 2010). Even developments in floating wind technology still require anchor points and the connection of associated infrastructure, such as inter-array and export cables (e.g. Butterfield et al. 2005; Statoil ASA 2017; see Chapter 1 in this volume). Therefore, an understanding of the ways in which seabed communities are affected by OWFs is vital, in part, so that appropriate mitigation measures can be identified and deployed. A set of key hypotheses have been generated for this chapter: •Changes in seabed ecology as a result of installing a wind farm in the marine environment are viewed as neither positive or negative in ecological terms. but just different. • The inherent variability of the seabed biota and hydrodynamic conditions may prevent the subtle effects of OWFs being detected, in particular in current wind-farm locations around the North Sea. • Hard structures associated with OWFs are available as colonisation sites and ‘stepping stones’ for non-indigenous species. • A focus on the structure of the benthos rather than its ecological functioning does not satisfactorily assess impact. • The effect of a wind-farm structure on the seabed is mirrored by an effect of the seabed and its biota on the structure. • Given the many human activities and pressures, there are in-combination synergistic and antagonistic effects of all aspects of the same development, and cumulative effects of different developments in the same area, which need to be disentangled. • Location provides opportunities (for habitat creation) as well as threats (to the local biota and habitats), and both need to be considered together. • Climate change will increase the variability of an already highly variable system, making it increasingly difficult to detect the effects of the wind farm and its structures

ICES Workshop on the effects of offshore wind farms on marine benthos (WKEOMB) - Facilitating a closer international collaboration throughout the North Atlantic region

The workshop aimed at bringing experts working in the field of offshore wind farms – benthos together for the first time in order to get an overview on the state of the art. This was achieved by an extended poster session. The second issue of WKEOMB was to identify knowledge gaps and evaluating monitoring strategies. This issue was evaluated by disentangling the cause-effect relationships affected by the pressures of the activities during the construction and operation phase of offshore wind farms. All cause-effect relationships were summarized in a schematic presentation. The identifi-cation and a comprehensive overview of cause-effect relationships is a prerequisite for an efficient, hypothesis driven approach towards the disentanglement of the vari-ous effects of offshore wind farms on the marine benthos as well as on the whole eco-system. Further, manifold cause-effect relationships were prioritized based on three main research themes, biological resources – biogeochemical reactions – biodiversity, disentangled by the participants as relevant. An important outcome of the workshop is that benthos receives by far too little atten-tion compared to other ecosystem components (e.g. seabirds, marine mammals), al-though it contributes to a great extent to marine ecosystem services and goods, e.g. biodiversity, long-term carbon storage and trophic supply for higher trophic-level species. A second main outcome of WKEOMB was that legal baseline monitoring merely allows for net-effect descriptions but not for identifying and understanding the underlying processes. Key processes should be, thus, identified and become sub-ject to hypotheses-based target monitoring and/or experimental studies

Targeted monitoring in offshore windfarms — the need to understand cause–effect relationships in the marine benthos

In many European countries offshore windfarm projects are accompanied by obligatory environmental impact assessments, including baseline monitoring of the marine benthos and demersal fish. The effects of offshore windfarm developments on the benthic system are complex. However, legal baseline monitoring merely allows for net effect descriptions but not for identifying and understanding the underlying processes. Instead, key processes should be identified and become subject to hypotheses‐based target monitoring and/or experimental studies in order to make environmental impact assessments more efficient and reduce duplication internationally. We compiled an overview over the anthropogenic activities associated with the construction and operation of offshore windfarms and identified cause–effect relationship to facilitate the development of specific hypotheses. We expect offshore windfarming activities to modify the geomorphological and hydrodynamic environment at different temporal and spatial scales. The environmental effects will have consequences for the behaviour and physiology of benthic organisms, including demersal fish, restructuring natural local populations and communities. Major effects on biological production, biogeochemical processes, as well as on structure and function related to biodiversity, are expected from the massive colonization of the artificial underwater constructions by a specific hard‐bottom fauna which is naturally missing in soft sedimentary habitats. Understanding the mechanisms behind these changes is a priority for assessing and predicting the ecological implications for the benthic system. Such predictions may help to develop science‐based mitigation actions

A call for hypotheses‐based benthos research in offshore windfarm environmental impact studies

Offshore windfarms are expected to affect substantially the structure and functioning of marine ecosystems. Collision risks for migrating birds and noise impact on marine mammals and fish are issues of major public concern. Less charismatic organisms, however, from marine algae through to benthic invertebrates and demersal fish receive far less attention. We contend that the benthos deserves much greater attention owing to the numerous ecosystem goods and services, such as marine biodiversity and long‐term carbon storage and natural resources (e.g. for fish, birds, mammals, and finally humans), that are intimately linked to the benthic system. The installation and operation of extensive offshore windfarms in shallow shelf seas will initiate processes which are expected to affect benthic communities over various spatial and temporal scales. Extensive baseline monitoring programmes allow observations of structural changes to benthic communities, but this is a post‐hoc approach. To gain a mechanistic understanding of these processes that enables us to explain the observed changes, specific target monitoring and well‐designed experimental studies are required. In this conceptual talk we will discuss specific cause–effect relationships in the marine benthos arising from the anthropogenic activities associated with offshore windfarms. The identification of cause–effect relationships is the prerequisite for an efficient, hypothesis‐driven approach towards the disentanglement of the various effects of offshore windfarms on the marine benthos as well as on the whole ecosystem