In 2007, the Oregon Wave Energy Trust (OWET) put out a request for proposals to begin to discover answers to many of the environmental and human dimensions questions. A multidisciplinary group of social scientists – Flaxen Conway, Brent Steel, Michael Harte, and Bryan Tilt, Oregon State University – responded to...
The OSU Government Relations Office provides periodic updates that describe events in Washington, DC and Salem. These updates include insights on how budget and policy decisions at the state and federal level will affect OSU and are issued once or twice a month, depending on the level of activities in...
Oregon’s fishing community is concerned about the potential effects that wave energy conversion devices could have on Dungeness crab movement, behavior and harvests. Though crabbing has been a mainstay of West Coast economies for decades, little information has been collected or analyzed on adult Dungeness crab movement, in general, and...
Oregon Wave Energy Trust (OWET) is a nonprofit public-private partnership funded by the Oregon Innovation Council. Its mission is to support the responsible development of wave energy in Oregon. OWET emphasizes an inclusive, collaborative model to ensure that Oregon maintains its competitive advantage and maximizes the economic development potential of...
The Oregon Wave Energy Trust (OWET) commissioned this study to develop protocols and methods to achieve affordable, reliable, and repeatable electromagnetic (EM) measurements in the near-shore environment. The study was conducted in several stages, with a number of technical reports provided at each stage to document and describe findings. The...
The motion of floating objects are of importance to engineers and scientists in a
range of applications. For example, in the design of ships and wave energy convertors
and the study of debris mobilized by tsunamis. Measuring the movement of floating
objects in the laboratory can be challenging. Six degrees...
Increasingly diverse interests in commercial and recreational use of marine resources are creating new challenges for coastal ocean management. One concern of increased offshore use and development off the Oregon coast is the potential impact on marine bird populations. We summarized the primary surveys of seabird breeding colonies and at-sea...
Oregon has a strong framework for ocean planning rooted in the adoption of Oregon’s Ocean Resources Goal 19 in 1976. Goal 19 establishes that it is the State of Oregon’s policy to conserve marine resources and ecological functions for the purpose of providing long-term ecological, economic, and social value and...
While the coastal waters of western North America hold great promise for wind and wave energy development, many concerns have been raised about the potential environmental impacts of the installation of these devices and their complex mooring systems. Here I focus on characterizing benthic habitats and biological communities in offshore...
Offshore renewable energy development (ORED) could induce local ecological changes, negatively affecting species of conservation interest. If well planned and coordinated, on the other hand, ORED could be beneficial to the marine environment in the region of device deployment in several respects.
Because of the current scale and pace of...
Electromagnetic fields (EMF) originate from both natural and anthropogenic sources. In the sea, natural sources include the Earth’s magnetic field, sea and tidal currents traveling through that field, and various processes within organisms. Electricity moving along cables and various other devices (as a part of renewable offshore energy development) produces...
There are many drivers for the pursuit of renewable energy extraction from coastal seas. In the United Kingdom these include moving away from fossil fuels to mitigate the impacts of climate change, improving energy security by diversifying supply options, increasing wealth generation in outlying coastal communities, and seeking alternative sources...
This presentation will provide an overview of how the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) uses environmental information for decision-making and the role BOEM’s Environmental Studies Program (ESP) plays in fulfilling information needs to inform Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) resource management decisions.
The ESP conducts and oversees top-quality scientific research...
The offshore waters and the coastline of Oregon provide year-round habitat for a number of birds, marine mammals, sea turtles, and possibly bats, at least fifteen of which are federally listed as threatened or endangered. Previous workshops on offshore renewable energy have provided baseline information on the distribution and abundance...
[The main report can be found in the full conference proceedings. The files here are the conference presentation and an appendix to the main report,] The specific intent of this presentation is to provide a framework to stimulate thought and discussion about the issue of the potential ecological effects of...
Demands for space in Oregon’s Territorial Sea and Outer Continental Shelf are increasing over time, putting pressure on existing ecological resources, uses, and users of this shared public resource. Data and information are critical to understanding the impacts of this “sea change.” Key ecological questions need to be answered to...
The Oregon coast has been identified as an area with great potential for production of electricity from wave and wind energy, and development of marine renewable energy facilities are being discussed for several locations along the Oregon coast. The potential impact of this development on eastern gray whales is largely...
The ocean deployment of arrays of Wave Energy Converters (WEC arrays) appears likely in the near future, and deployment of offshore wind turbines has already started. These technologies tap into a potential renewable energy resource but also involve complex systems with uncertain environmental consequences that will likely scale with the...
As the Chief of the Environmental Sciences Section of BOEM, the speaker welcomed participants and gave background on the topic from the federal perspective. She identified BOEM's need to share environmental research information as well as determine the largest data gaps to guide future research. From her perspective, the intent...
Construction of a wave energy facility is planned for a site off of Reedsport, Oregon. The initial licensed development will consist of ten buoys within a 0.25 mile2 area at depths of 50 - 69 m and will produce up to 1.5 megawatts (MW; Figure 1)a. A proposed project expansion...