Rangeland Ecology & Management

Get reliable science

USING MULTI-CRITERIA ANALYSIS TO MICROSITE WIND TURBINES
Author
Varelas, Leticia A.
Tanaka, John A.
Rashford, Ben
Ritten, John
Publisher
Society for Range Management
Publication Year
2015
Body

The Chokecherry and Sierra Madre (CSM) wind energy development is a proposed 1,000 turbine project in south-central Wyoming. The site is located across a checkerboard of private and federal lands. As a result, the Wyoming Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is charged with evaluating the potential impacts of the CSM project. For most public lands, management decisions are based on the multiple-use concept. Different land uses are often competitive, requiring land managers to make trade-offs to meet certain objectives. Multi-criteria analysis (MCA) is a spatial decision framework that allows managers to evaluate the trade-offs that exist between land-use alternatives and impacted ecosystems. In the CSM area, the primary concerns are wildlife impacts, soil erosion, invasive plants, viewshed, existing land uses, and local community impacts. Micrositing is the process used to locate individual wind turbines. The goal of this study is to create a MCA to microsite wind turbines in optimal areas for the CSM project. We first identify suitable turbine site locations that meet the requirements for wind energy generation as well as physical site needs. For each suitable location, we map the expected impacts of turbines on ecological, social, and economic systems. Finally, we use ant colony optimization, a heuristic modeling approach, to microsite individual wind turbines in the CSM.

Language
English
Resource Type
Text
Document Type
Conference Proceedings
Conference Name
SRM Sacramento, CA