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© OekoFor GbR -
© OekoFor GbR -
© OekoFor GbR -
© OekoFor GbR -
© OekoFor GbR
What is this project about?
NatForWINSENT II stands for nature conservation (Natur-Forschung) in the wind energy test site WINSENT, an on-shore wind energy test site in Germany.
It is a multi-year research project funded by the BfN (German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation).
The main focus of this project is to investigate the occurrence and behaviour of bats and birds in close vicinity to wind turbines, with the aim of deriving and testing mitigation measures for these animals.
One theory for the reason that bats are observed to spend time in the proximity of wind turbines is that they hunt for insects there. As such, the occurrence of insects at wind turbines is being recorded, in order to investigate the relationship between bat activity and insect abundance at wind turbines.
The results are expected to help improve predictions of bat activity at wind turbines and thus optimise mitigation measures for these animals.
What does OekoFor do?
OekoFor has been commissioned to record insect abundance and activity patterns.
To quantitatively record insects, we modified our ecoPi and developed an insect photo trap. It enables the automatic, visual detection of insects at night and during the day.
The insect photo trape is equipped with an attractant surface which is bright yellow, a colour traditionally used in pollinator attraction. In this way it attracts pollinating insects during the day.
This surface is illuminated at night at predefined intervals with an ultraviolet (UV) light, the attractant surface reflects light in the UV spectrum, thus attracting nocturnal phototactic insects. During the “attraction phase” (with the UV light at night) a photo is taken every 10 seconds of the attraction surface, capturing in detail the insects present for a pre-determined period of time.
Like the other ecoPis, our insect photo trap also has an internet connection and facilitating the direct upload of captured images to our server and remote access. Via remote access it is possible to check the functionality of the devices and adjust functional settings (e.g. changing the timing of the attraction phases).
To view the recorded data and an overview of the functionality of the installed devices, we developed an intuitive app - similar to the ecoPi-Dashboard ↗ - provides an overview of the functions of the installed insect photo traps and allows the targeted retrieval of camera recordings.
To evaluate the large volumes of image data gathered in this project, we have developed an automated evaluation method,
using a self-trained object detection model.
We are currently optimising the latest version of this model.
How the insect photo trap works
Further links
More information about the project NatForWINSENT II:
News
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April 2024
Official start for the second phase of the project.
The wind turbines should go into operation in August 2024, then the experimental phase “AFTER” the construction of the wind turbines will begin. -
August 2023
The first phase of the project - investigations “BEFORE” the constructions of the wind turbines is complete, the data are evaluated and the results have been published in a BfN Report ↗ (only available in German language)
You can find out more about the report in our blog post blog post ↗
Partners and Funding Organisations
The project was funded by the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN) with funds from the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection (BMUV). Dr Frank Musiol from the Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Württemberg (ZSW) is the project manager.
OekoFor GbR is a project partner of ZSW. Other project partners co-operating in this project investigating other species groups are the Freiburger Institue for applied animal ecology (FrInaT), Swiss Ornithological Institute (Vogelwarte) and Institute for Measurement and Sensor Technology (UMIT).
