An Ecosystem Approach for Studying the Impact of Offshore Wind Farms: The Dieppe-Le Tréport Case Study
Résumé
The worldwide demand for renewable energy development is increasing rapidly, motivated by
the challenge to reduce fossil fuel emissions in accordance with political imperatives to combat
global climate change. Following the European Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA)
Directive 85/337/EEC, several studies have been undertaken to identify the environmental
conditions and ecosystem functioning at selected sites prior to OWF construction. However,
these studies are generally focused on the conservation of some species and there is no holistic
approach for analyzing the effects arising from OWF construction and operation. The goal of
this study is to promote a sampling strategy to collect data on the different ecosystem
compartments of the future Dieppe-Le Tréport (DLT) OWF site, adopting an ecosystem
approach, which could be applied to other OWFs for the implementation of a trophic network
analysis. For that, the collection of new data on biological compartments (phytoplankton,
zooplankton, suprabenthos, meiofauna, benthos, demersal fishes, marine mammals and
seabirds) are essential. Two cruises (winter: February 2022 and summer: September 2022)
allowed to estimate the contribution of each zoological group in two main benthic habitats:
coarse sand and medium clean sands, located on the site. In addition, isotopic analyses of the
different biological compartments from phytoplankton to seabirds were also done as well as,
stomach contents on demersal fish. These studies will offer a more integrated approach and will
allow to characterize the trophic web functioning of the future OWF and in the vicinity of the
OWF before the construction.