Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units Program: Massachusetts
Education, Research and Technical Assistance for Managing Our Natural Resources

We will address three primary issues that are critical for development and operation of offshore wind energy facilities. These are (1) ecological assessment of the positive and negative impacts of offshore wind power for birds and bats, fish and other marine species; (2) identification of critical areas and habitats for marine organisms using radar, sonar, and spatial modeling combined with experiments to quantify population and community dynamics; and (3) development and evaluation of monitoring protocols and technologies for detecting risks to marine organisms, especially given the unique opportunity to deploy aquatic monitoring equipment. During the 5-year period of this project we will train 25 PhD students across 8 different departments at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.