Smallwood, K. Shawn; Neher, Lee; Bell, Douglas A. - In: Energies 2 (2009) 4, pp. 915-943
Wind turbines in the Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area (Alameda/Contra Costa Counties, California, USA) generate about 730 GWh of electricity annually, but have been killing thousands of birds each year, including <2,000 raptors and hundreds of burrowing owls. We have developed collision hazard maps and hazard ratings of wind turbines to guide relocation of existing wind turbines and careful repowering to modern turbines to reduce burrowing owl fatalities principally, and other birds secondarily. Burrowing owls selected burrow sites lower on slopes and on smaller, shallower slopes than represented by the average 10 × 10 m<sup>2</sup> grid cell among 187,908 grid cells sampled from 2,281,169 grid cells comprising a...</2,000>
