Petersen, I.K., Mackenzie, M.L. & Scott-Hayward, L.A.S. 20xx. Long-term impacts on Long-tailed Duck distributions resulting from the construction of the Rødsand II and Nysted offshore wind farms, Denmark. Aarhus University, DCE – Danish Centre for Environment and Energy, 20 pp. Technical Report from DCE – Danish Centre for Environment and Energy No. 120. http://dce2.au.dk/pub/TR120.pdf
The spatial distribution of Long-tailed Ducks around the Nysted and Rødsand II offshore wind farms in Danish Baltic was resurveyed during February to April 2018. These surveys were a follow up on a series of surveys, started in 2000, prior to the construction of the two wind farms to enable pre-construction bird distributions to be compared between different development phases of the two wind farms. In this report we compare bird distribution between four phases. Decreases in the density of Long-tailed Duck within and in the near vicinity of the wind farms post-construction at both sites has been documented in earlier reports. In this report we document that the present density of Long-tailed Duck within the wind farms remains significantly lower than it was prior to the construction of the wind farms. Comparing bird densities between the two latest phases (2011 and 2018) showed modest increase in Long-tailed Duck densities in and around the wind farm areas. The increase, however, involve less than an estimated 30 birds (compared to 3,000-4,000 estimated in the survey area) and are biologically trivial when compared to densities in unaffected areas.
