First Specific Biodiversity Assessment in the Portuguese Pilot Zone for Marine Renewables

Coelho, H.; Rodrigues, S.; Ferriera, R.; De Silva, R.; Pendlebury, C.; Walls, R.; Mascarenhas, M.; Costa, H. (2012). First Specific Biodiversity Assessment in the Portuguese Pilot Zone for Marine Renewables. Paper presented at 32nd Annual Meeting of the International Association for Impact Assessment (IAIA 2012), Porto, Portugal.

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Abstract

The Portuguese Pilot Zone (PPZ) was created in 2008 (Decree-Law n. º 5/2008, January 8th) and is comprised by an area of ca. 320 km², between the 30m and 90m water depth and located at the west coast of São Pedro de Muel, central Portugal. The PPZ was created to support the deployment of marine renewable energy in Portugal. The integration of biodiversity into the PPZ’s environmental management strategy is a key-factor and efforts have been made to characterize and produce baseline information that can be used in the decision-making process.