Developing an ecological risk‐based approach to facilitate licensing offshore wind development

Abstract The increasing societal demands on the seabed due to the expansion of offshore wind energy highlight an urgent need to better understand the relationship between human activities and the structure and function of seabed ecosystems. In this paper, we propose an empirically derived approach to quantify relative ecological risk to benthic invertebrate assemblages from future offshore wind development. Using benthic data from over 22,000 seabed grab samples across the UK shelf and wider North Sea contained in OneBenthic, a freely available online data repository, we produce modeled raster layers for three biological criteria upon which we define ecological risk. These are (1) relative benthic sensitivity based on response traits expression, (2) benthic biodiversity, and (3) assemblage rarity. We create a holistic map based on these three layers and discuss how this information may be used, using a new online tool, to assist decisions regarding future offshore development to minimize potential impacts on benthic assemblages. Given the broad spatial coverage of our maps, our tool could help expedite the expansion of offshore wind in a large area of the northeast Atlantic, whilst the underlying methodology can be applied to other regions with extensive benthic survey data, thereby facilitating international commitments to reduce carbon emissions. We propose how the maps may be improved and discuss the future incorporation of extra criteria into the framework.