Scotland: Carbon Trust to Create Seabird Mapping Tool

The Carbon Trust-led Offshore Renewables Joint Industry Project (ORJIP) is working on creating a GIS/maps tool for Marine Scotland’s website, aiming to help reduce consenting risks in relation to offshore wind farms’ effect on seabirds.

The Carbon Trust has issued a tender for the development of the tool, which is open for proposal submissions until 26 January.

Precisely, the tool will be used to estimate the importance of offshore wind farm locations in the wider Forth and Tay and wider Moray Firth regions for seabird species, the likelihood of them being from an SPA (special protection area) population, and their sensitivity to the development of the wind farm.

As part of the project, the company will also be in charge of testing the performance of the analytical tool, as well as providing a user manual for the sensitivity tool.

In addition, the developer will be required to provide four months of technical support to Marine Scotland and produce a final report detailing methods, assumptions and recommendations for any further work.