Journal of Sustainability

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Wind Turbines on the Migratory Bird Flyways

editors | 28 November, 2008 20:46

by George Marinakis, george@JournalofSustainability.com

There is much talk about bird mortality at specific wind turbine sites. Though this tactical analysis is useful, there is no strategic analysis comparing the projected “optimal” placement of wind turbines on a continental scale against migratory bird flyways. The purpose of this article is to encourage GIS practitioners to quantitatively perform the type of analysis that I am outlining here.

A Harvard undergraduate won a prize in 2007-08 for performing a GIS analysis to determine the “optimal” placement of wind turbines on a continental scale. The student took NASA wind profile maps and converted them into wind power equivalents. His analysis can be downloaded at

http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/academic/fellowships/prizes/gisprize/ay07-08/

His results: the optimal states for wind turbines are North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, north Texas, Montana, and Wyoming.

Unfortunately, this list of states traces the Central Flyway for migratory birds. It also overlaps with the Mississippi Flyway. Maps of the migratory bird flyways are available at

http://www.birdnature.com/flyways.html

It should go without saying that a sustainable energy policy must take into account bird strikes when considering the placement of wind turbines.

The USFWS has a GIS dataset with the migratory bird flyways at

http://www.fws.gov/data/FWSNatlData.htm

The metadata is available at

http://www.fws.gov/data/migflyway.html