Ocean Sciences Meeting
February 22-26, 2010, Portland, Oregon
Renewable hydrokinetic energy development in coastal and estuarine environments
Session Description:
Many types of hydrokinetic renewable energy devices are under active development for marine and estuarine systems, typically designed to extract energy from waves, tides, currents, or thermal gradients. These novel technologies will require new emplacements and moorings in aquatic environments with attendant intrusions upon the environment, including acoustic signals, changes to mixing, and electromagnetic fields. Hydrokinetic energy sources are able to provide clean energy, but their effects on the physical and biological environment are not well understood. This session will examine the technologies under development and address the current state of our knowledge on how they will interact with estuarine and coastal, and offshore environments. Contributions are sought that deal with physical effects (current flow, energy reduction, mixing, sand transport) and biological effects (larval transport, entrainment, entanglement, behavior) on all trophic levels.
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