The goal of this session is to review the current state of knowledge at the interface of biodiversity and renewable energies, to identify persisting knowledge gaps, and to spark discussions about pathways towards a biodiversity-friendly energy transition. We welcome contributions covering any of the renewable energy sources, namely solar, wind, hydropower, biomass, biogas, tidal- and wave energy, geothermal energy and biofuels and from all levels of biodiversity consequences, e.g., food webs, ecosystems, habitats, and ecosystem services. We further appreciate contributions on societal aspects of biodiversity stewardship and the energy transition.
Climate change threatens biodiversity, and a rapid energy transition is essential for human and ecological well-being. Yet, biodiversity outcomes vary markedly with where, how, and which renewable technologies are deployed. While some technologies, such as hydropower, have received substantial scientific attention, others (e.g., solar parks) remain comparatively understudied. Consolidating the available evidence is therefore critical to support an effective science–policy dialogue.
We conducted a systematic literature review to map trade-offs and synergies between renewable energy deployment and biodiversity globally. To scale beyond conventional manual reviews, we developed a computational pipeline that automates key steps of the review process, enables the processing of thousands of articles, and supports a living evidence base that can be refreshed as new studies are published. This approach is designed to improve consistency, traceability, and updateability of the synthesis.
We included studies investigating the biodiversity implications of the following energy sources: solar, wind, hydropower, wave energy, tidal energy, geothermal energy, biogas, biomass, and biofuel. We considered a broad set of biodiversity facets, covering organisms (identified either by scientific or by common names), habitats and ecosystems. We also included ecosystem services, ecosystem functions, and ecosystem processes. This scope allows us to capture impacts and potential co-benefits across taxa, habitats, and levels of ecological organization.
In the presentation we will (i) detail the methodological approach for automating systematic reviews in this domain and (ii) summarize the main patterns emerging from the evidence base. We will highlight main challenges and achievements of this “living” review, summarize the main findings and illuminate where research gaps may constrain decision-making. Overall, our work provides a transparent, scalable synthesis of the current state of scientific knowledge and a practical method to keep the synthesis up to date. With this, we hope to support alignment in renewable energy planning and biodiversity conservation.
How to cite: Schuh, L. and Gossner, M.: Trade-offs between renewable energies and biodiversity: systematic, automated synthesis of scientific evidence , World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-276, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-276, 2026.
A rapid transition to renewable energy is essential for climate change mitigation, yet poorly planned developments risk contributing to the biodiversity extinction crisis and losing social licence through impacts on sensitive species. We provide the first quantitative analysis that demonstrates how renewable energy can be strategically deployed to effectively erase biodiversity impacts while meeting energy needs cost-effectively. Focusing on Queensland, Australia - a global biodiversity hotspot experiencing rapid renewable energy expansion - we quantify how increasing levels of biodiversity protection only modestly increases costs of renewable energy infrastructure projects required to meet electricity demand in a net-zero emission energy system in 2050. To identify areas most important for threatened species in Queensland, we ran a spatial prioritisation of the spatial distribution of threatened species and ecosystems across the state to create a map of priority biodiversity areas. We then used this map to exclude renewable energy infrastructure development in five scenarios: business as usual (BAU), the top 30%, the top 50%, the top 70%, and the top 90% of priority biodiversity areas. By avoiding 30% of the most important areas for threatened species when developing renewable energy infrastructure, we avoid 90% of species’ distributions, with 77% of species distributions completely avoided. Avoiding infrastructure in these areas adds just 1-2% to electricity bills in 2050 relative to our BAU scenario. Increasing protection to 50% of lands protects 96% of species distributions, adding just 2-4% to electricity bills in 2050. These cost increases are likely much smaller than the uncertainty of the planning task, rendering them effectively unobservable. We show how other Australian states also have high land use flexibility relative to energy demand, indicating the generality of our results in Australia and the global transferability of our method and analysis. Our approach reveals opportunities for biodiversity protection within energy transition planning and challenges the perception that global renewable energy and biodiversity protection targets are irreconcilable.
How to cite: M. Rogers, A., Zhang, Y., Pascale, A., Morgain, R., E. M. Watson, J., Ward, M., Brear, M., and Wintle, B.: Joint infrastructure and biodiversity optimisation reveals favourable cost-protection trade-offs in a carefully planned renewable energy transition. , World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-103, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-103, 2026.
Expanding renewable energy production and halting biodiversity loss are both recognized as interests of national importance in Switzerland. The Federal Act on Energy sets binding targets for renewable energy expansion, while the Swiss Biodiversity Strategy seeks to conserve ecosystems, species, and genetic diversity. These two objectives, combined with Switzerland’s unique landscapes, complex topography, and limited space for large-scale infrastructure, raise an urgent question: How can the energy transition proceed without compromising biodiversity and landscape quality? Addressing this question requires transparent, spatially explicit, and scientifically sound tools to assess trade-offs and synergies between renewable energy production and the conservation of biodiversity and landscapes.
The Swiss SolarWind Explorer is a web-based spatial decision-support tool co-created with stakeholders. It provides harmonized maps of key criteria for the expansion of open-field solar and wind energy, including energy potential, grid connection, accessibility, and legal restrictions. These criteria are presented alongside indicators of importance for biodiversity, landscape quality, public acceptance, and conflicting land uses to avoid potential harm. One innovation is that importance for biodiversity is represented through not only protected areas, but also three novel spatial indicators that characterise each pixel’s contribution to minimising species extinction risk and sustaining ecological complementarity and connectivity.
Trough the Swiss SolarWind Explorer, users can visualise, weigh, and combine various criteria at 50 m resolution across Switzerland. These functionalities enable users to explore pixel-level suitability and constraints, identify low-conflict areas, and assess the impact of prioritising factors such as high energy potential or low distance to existing infrastructure. Detailed analyses of the integrated map layers help tackle complex questions, including: At what threshold does additional renewable energy deployment result in a disproportionate negative impact on biodiversity? How do different planning scenarios affect the geographic distribution of optimal, low-conflict areas across Switzerland?
This contribution presents insights from using the Swiss SolarWind Explorer web-tool and further scientific analyses, revealing spatial patterns of conflicts and compatibility between renewable energy production and biodiversity conservation. It highlights how integrated, transparent, and scientifically robust spatial decision-support tools can guide a biodiversity-friendly energy transition in Switzerland.
How to cite: Reusser, M., Sieber, P., Boussange, V., Früh, J., Chauvier-Mendes, Y., Adde, A., Altermatt, F., Seneviratne, S., Schwaab, J., and Grêt-Regamey, A.: Promoting a biodiversity-friendly energy transition through spatial decision support: Insights from the Swiss SolarWind Explorer, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-959, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-959, 2026.
Global efforts to mitigate climate change rely on a transition towards renewable energy systems. In Switzerland, the high potential for solar energy production has led to an increasing interest in expanding solar energy infrastructure, such as ground-mounted photovoltaic systems. However, the siting of these systems requires space that comprises ecosystems providing benefits for human well-being, i.e., ecosystem services, such as habitat quality, agricultural production and recreational opportunities. Uncertainty arises because ground-mounted photovoltaic systems can create both trade-offs and synergies with existing ecosystem service supply. In addition, ecosystem service supply is influenced by climate and land-use changes, as well as shifts in people’s worldviews, beliefs, and values, introducing additional layers of uncertainty. Conceptually, uncertainties in ecosystem services assessments arise from scenario development (scenario uncertainty), modeling (model uncertainty), and the translation of results into decision-making (decision uncertainty). Integrating these different sources of uncertainty into ecosystem services assessments is therefore essential to support robust solar energy siting and enhances the potential uptake of results in decision-making.
For this purpose, we present a spatially explicit, expert-based Bayesian network that addresses scenario, model and decision uncertainty to inform robust solar energy siting under consideration of ecosystem services. The model integrates data from scientific literature, expert knowledge, and future change scenarios, including exploratory and normative scenarios, to identify suitable locations for solar energy systems in Switzerland, which are robust to future changes. Expert knowledge is collected through an online questionnaire, engaging representatives from academia, private sector and public institutions, with particular attention to regions characterised by high solar potential. Using this approach, we map the site suitability across Switzerland and evaluate the robustness, highlighting associated opportunities and risks. By revealing where uncertainties prevail, this study supports an energy transition that aligns with the sustainable management of ecosystem services and can inform planning decisions for solar energy siting.
How to cite: Walther, F., Black, B., Stritih, A., and Grêt-Regamey, A.: Assessing ecosystem services under uncertainty to inform robust solar energy siting in Switzerland, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-685, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-685, 2026.
Each year, billions of birds traverse across continents, encountering an increasingly dense network of wind turbines, power lines, and other energy infrastructure. These structures can directly cause mortality through collisions and electrocutions, and indirectly act as barriers to movement. Yet these risks arise in a highly dynamic environment that traditional, habitat-based conservation approaches struggle to address. Effective impact mitigation therefore requires approaches that recognize the airspace as a dynamic habitat and account for the constantly shifting movements of migratory species.
A key challenge lies in identifying when and where migrants are most at risk. Networks of radars have become the cornerstone of a scalable solution, providing continuous, multi-scale measurements of bird movements. Building on these networks, we present a scalable method to map nocturnal bird migration patterns at large spatial scales, with which wind energy stakeholders can anticipate high-risk migration times and zones and integrate them early in the siting and permitting process. In doing so, they can adhere to the mitigation hierarchy by proactively avoiding negative impacts on wildlife and enjoy a stream-lined and thus, faster, environmental assessment process.
When avoiding negative impacts through spatial planning is not possible, temporary shutdowns remain an effective mitigation measure, capable of protecting a large proportion of migrants with relatively small, well-timed actions. However, implementing curtailment for large-scale nocturnal bird migration requires coordination and preparation at the level of energy grids. We present how the Netherlands uses bird migration forecasts trained on radar data that trigger an operational decision process roughly 48 hours in advance. With this decision window, grid and wind farm operators can prepare for temporary shutdowns on nights of peak bird migration and thus, safeguard passage for millions of nocturnal migrants.
Although focused primarily on broad-front bird migration, these approaches are likely to benefit all migrants moving in these periods, including bats, highlighting the potential for cross-taxonomic synergies. Our approach demonstrates that dynamic aeroconservation can resolve conflicts between renewable-energy expansion and the protection of aerial biodiversity, a critical step toward a nature-inclusive energy transition.
How to cite: Hoekstra, B., Bradarić, M., Kranstauber, B., Bauer, S., and Shamoun-Baranes, J.: Dynamic aeroconservation for a nature-inclusive energy transition, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-148, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-148, 2026.
With global ambitions to decarbonize the energy system, the installed capacity of wind turbines will continue to increase dramatically worldwide. This raises concerns about environmental impacts of wind energy infrastructure and operations, particularly for collision of aerial wildlife.
Using a network of weather surveillance radars, we quantified numbers, timing and spatial extent of nightly and annual large-scale bird movements over Western Europe. We also mapped onshore windfarms and calculated potential energy production using wind speeds and distribution data. Integrating 3D bird movement patterns, turbine traits and energy production, we estimated the number of birds that are potentially at risk of collision because they fly in proximity to wind turbines and at heights of rotating blades.
We found that an average of 794 birds flew through the rotor-swept area of a single wind turbine per year, yielding an estimated total of 208 million birds potentially at risk of colliding over the year across the study area. Yet, there was considerable spatial and temporal variation in the number of birds at risk, with peaks over the two seasons of intense migration. When accounting for the dynamic orientation of wind turbines in response to main wind direction, this number was reduced to 134 million birds and further to 114 million when considering cut-in and cut-out wind speeds during which blades cease rotating. Potential energy production varied geographically but was reatively evenly spread over the year, with a total of 718 petajoules (or nearly 200,000 kilowatt hours).
To demonstrate the potential for designing measures to mitigate risk to aerial biodiversity, we derive several curtailment scenarios and compare costs and benefits for energy production and conserving biodiversity and show that surprisingly efficient trade-offs are possible. Thus, with our approach we can derive solutions for addressing multiple, seemingly contrasting challenges - the need for a transition to net-zero and to halt biodiversity loss.
How to cite: Bauer, S., Nussbaumer, R., Rojas Tito, D. A., Shamoun-Baranes, J., and Farnsworth, A.: Safeguarding aerial migrants need not jeopardize wind energy production, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-992, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-992, 2026.
The rapid expansion of solar energy production across Europe has raised concerns about its compatibility with biodiversity conservation. Solar parks can offer opportunities for nature restoration within intensively used landscapes, yet their ecological value strongly depends on design, land-use history, and management. Understanding these factors is essential for integrating biodiversity objectives into the energy transition.
We investigated biodiversity patterns across existing solar parks differing in land-use origin, including former agricultural land and brownfields. The study focused on multiple taxonomic groups— vascular plants, birds, butterflies, spiders, epigeic arthropods and pollinators—to identify both effective and feasible measures supporting biodiversity under real-world management conditions.
Field surveys were conducted in a representative set of operational solar parks in Central Europe. Species richness and community composition were related to local factors such as vegetation structure and mowing frequency, as well as to the surrounding landscape context. We also examined how the land-use origin of each site influences its current biodiversity potential.
Our results reveal that biodiversity within solar parks is highly variable and shaped by both local management and broader landscape characteristics. Pollinators and vascular plants were the most sensitive indicators, responding positively to extensive management and habitat heterogeneity. In contrast, birds were less diverse, and their occurrence was more constrained by potential barrier effects. The origin of the site—brownfield versus former farmland—proved to be a significant predictor of overall diversity and species composition.
We conclude that biodiversity-friendly management of solar parks cannot follow a universal model. Measures must respect the ecological context of the surrounding landscape, the site’s history, and ongoing maintenance regimes. Increasing structural and habitat heterogeneity appears to be the most effective way to enhance biodiversity. However, the key challenge lies in motivating park owners and operators to implement such measures, ensuring that ecological benefits become an integral part of solar energy development.
How to cite: Řeřicha, M., Seidl, M., Havrdová, A., Doudová, J., Douda, J., Zasadil, P., Pelcová, L., and Harabiš, F.: Solar parks and biodiversity: context matters, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-126, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-126, 2026.
The rapid expansion of renewable energy infrastructure requires approaches that simultaneously deliver climate benefits and help halt biodiversity loss. GALP Renewables business unit has adopted a corporate-level Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) strategy designed to embed ecological value creation across all phases of solar project development. This strategy provides a structured framework consisting of an Initial Environmental and Social Assessment, a rigorous Ecological Baseline Study, identification of ecosystem components (C1–C5), selection of targeted management actions, and definition of metrics and KPIs to track ecological performance. Together, these tools support the implementation of Smart Renewable Power Plants (SRPP), where infrastructure is planned and managed as an ecological component that contributes to habitat quality, ecosystem functions and social acceptance.
To demonstrate feasibility and replicability, a pilot project was implemented at the Alcoutim photovoltaic plant in southern Portugal. The surrounding Mediterranean mosaic landscape presented strong potential for ecological enhancement. Management actions included differentiated vegetation management, passive and active restoration of natural and semi-natural habitats, promotion of native shrubs and herbaceous diversity, and Nature-based Solutions such as nest boxes, bat roosts and pollinator structures. Additional measures improved ecological permeability, reduced disturbance and increased microhabitat availability within the solar array.
Monitoring during the first year revealed substantial biodiversity value and early positive ecological responses. More than 70 plant species were recorded, including habitat-forming Mediterranean taxa and four habitat types listed under the EU Habitats Directive. Arthropod sampling documented 48 aerial insect species, including key pollinators. Avifaunal surveys identified 91 bird species, with notable representation of shrubland and steppe-associated communities. Acoustic and roost monitoring registered 17–21 bat species, including regionally relevant records. Camera traps confirmed a well-structured mammal assemblage, including Iberian lynx, red fox, badger and high densities of European rabbit—a key prey species underpinning Mediterranean trophic networks.
This integrated approach illustrates how corporate strategy, ecological design and evidence-based monitoring can converge to deliver biodiversity-positive solar development. The Alcoutim case demonstrates a practical and replicable model for renewable energy operators seeking to operationalise BNG and highlights actionable pathways for scaling a biodiversity-friendly energy transition across Mediterranean landscapes and beyond.
How to cite: Mascarenhas, M., Cardoso, P. E., Santos, J., Rosa, L., and Montenegro, C.: Integrating corporate strategy with Biodiversity: the Alcoutim pilot project as a pathway for biodiversity-positive renewables and Net Gain, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-554, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-554, 2026.
Storage hydropower, the dam-based backbone of renewable electricity systems, plays a crucial role in the energy transition by providing flexible capacity, seasonal storage, and grid stability. However, the same operational flexibility that enables climate-friendly energy production also imposes significant pressures on river ecosystems through hydropeaking: rapid, often sub-daily flow fluctuations caused by on-demand hydropower production that alter riverine habitats and threaten biodiversity.
Recent studies show that the ecological impacts of hydropeaking scale non-linearly with its frequency and amplitude, creating cumulative stress on aquatic communities far beyond the disturbance caused by natural flow events such as floods. For instance, with every hydropeak, organisms such as fish and invertebrates risk stranding on rapidly drying riverbanks leading to high mortality and the loss of often highly specialized species.
As hydropeaking is expected to increase in the near future, driven by the growing need to balance volatile renewable energy from wind and solar in a CO₂-neutral way, reconciling large-scale, climate-friendly electricity flexibility with local, effective biodiversity conservation will become increasingly challenging. The biodiversity–energy dilemma can therefore not be solved at the scale of single hydropower plants and will require strategic, system-level planning that integrates ecological and hydropower-operational perspectives.
This talk synthesizes recent empirical results and conceptual insights on hydropeaking impacts and calls for the development of criteria-based approaches to guide coordinated hydropower management at the catchment and national scales. Such approaches could enable transparent, evidence-based decisions that balance energy production with biodiversity conservation for a sustainable and environmentally friendly development of our energy system.
How to cite: Bätz, N. and Weber, C.: Beyond the Power Plant – Reconciling Storage Hydropower and Biodiversity in the Energy Transition, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-94, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-94, 2026.
Artificial floods can be used to restore hydromorphological and ecological processes in floodplains downstream of dams, where altered flow and sediment regimes often reduce biodiversity and habitat dynamics. In the Sarine floodplain (Canton Fribourg) below the Rossens dam, a floodplain of national importance, decades of residual-flow management and bedload retention have led to stabilized channel conditions, loss of open gravel areas, excessive algal growth, riverbed clogging, and a macrozoobenthos community dominated by lentic taxa adapted to low-disturbance environments. To counteract these deficits, eleven artificial floods between 2016 and 2025, ranging from 75 to 650 m³/s, were released and monitored using in situ measurements and UAV surveys for long-term hydromorphological and ecological change detection.
The results show that artificial floods trigger immediate but short-term ecosystem responses. Lotic macrozoobenthos taxa adapted to variable flow conditions, particularly EPT groups, increased directly after larger flood events. Periphyton biomass declined even after small floods but regenerated rapidly in the absence of repeated disturbance. Morphological analyses revealed substantial erosion, redistribution of sediments, and the re-opening of gravel habitats during high-magnitude floods. These morphological changes are crucial for restoring habitat heterogeneity and promoting biodiversity.
However, isolated and infrequent floods are insufficient to generate sustainable hydromorphological and ecological improvements. Without regular disturbance, the system quickly returns to residual-flow conditions, limiting long-term gains in habitat quality and macrozoobenthos diversity. Detailed long-term analyses further indicate that flood frequency and duration, rather than magnitude alone, are key drivers controlling changes in macrozoobenthos functional composition and the balance between lentic and lotic assemblages.
Therefore, an adaptive management program was developed that alternates frequent low- and high-magnitude floods, complemented by targeted sediment replenishment where necessary. This strategy ensures that restoration measures remain compatible with operational constraints while promoting floodplain functioning. By maintaining a disturbance regime closer to natural conditions, the approach aims to sustain biodiversity, reactivate dynamic sediment processes, and better balance ecological needs with hydropower requirements in regulated rivers and floodplains.
How to cite: Doering, M., Antonetti, M., Tonolla, D., and Brandenberg, M.: Multi-year artificial flooding to restore a hydropower-regulated floodplain system: Balancing biodiversity needs and hydropower requirements, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-467, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-467, 2026.
Achieving global decarbonization goals will require substantial expansion of renewable energy infrastructure, including hydropower. Yet hydropower dams fragment river ecosystems, threatening freshwater biodiversity and the communities dependent on freshwater fisheries. Reconciling renewable energy development with biodiversity conservation remains a critical challenge for sustainable energy transitions.
Our recent global assessments quantified dam-induced habitat fragmentation for approximately 10,000 lotic fish species across 40,000 existing large dams. Current fragmentation hotspots are concentrated in regions with legacy hydropower development, including North America, Europe, South Africa, India, and China. This fragmentation has severe consequences for population persistence: approximately 3,500 fish species face potential extirpation in portions of their range due to habitat fragments too small to sustain viable populations. Furthermore, planned future hydropower developments threaten to intensify these impacts in tropical biodiversity hotspots, with projected connectivity declines of 20–40 percentage points across species in the Amazon, Niger, Congo, Salween, and Mekong basins.
To address these challenges, we propose a strategic restoration-development paradigm that combines targeted dam removal, fishway retrofitting, and strategic planning for future infrastructure. Using multi-objective optimization and species-level habitat connectivity modeling for 710 fish species in the Lower Mekong Basin, we demonstrate how this integrated approach can break locked-in environmental impacts from past ad-hoc development. Our results show that removing 12 high-impact dams increases basin-wide connectivity by 60%, effectively restoring conditions achievable had strategic planning been adopted before hydropower deployment began. Lower-ambition scenarios that do not include dam removal, but still combine strategic planning with fishway installation, resulted in modest improvements of up to 17%. Importantly, restoration-development outcomes varied across targeted species groups, highlighting the need for tailored conservation objectives in river basin planning.
Our framework offers actionable pathways for mitigating legacy impacts while enabling limited, low-impact hydropower expansion. Strategic restoration-development can guide biodiversity-inclusive energy transitions in major river basins worldwide, balancing climate mitigation benefits with freshwater ecosystem conservation.
How to cite: Barbarossa, V., Schipper, A., and Schmitt, R.: Strategic restoration-development for biodiversity-inclusive hydropower expansion, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-598, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-598, 2026.
Hydropower is a highly efficient, low-carbon source of energy. However, its operation often leaves only a minimal amount of water in rivers—known as environmental flows. In Switzerland, an above-average proportion of aquatic species are listed as endangered, including 65% of fish species. An increase in hydropower production will further intensify competing demands on water resources, particularly regarding environmental flow requirements, where renewable energy generation and ecological needs conflict. Put simply, environmental flows represent a reduction in hydropower production and a minimum threshold for river ecology.
In the past, the reduction of Swiss hydropower production due to environmental flow requirements has been repeatedly overestimated, mainly due to missing data. This lack of information has hindered evidence-based decision-making aimed at balancing energy production, water quality, and biodiversity conservation. The newly developed environmental flow database provides publicly available data, encompassing legal, hydrological, and technical attributes. It covers 252 hydropower plants with an installed capacity of at least 3 MW and is built on a plant-specific structure, which allows for linkage with the Swiss hydropower statistics (WASTA) to handle hydro-energetic questions efficiently.
A publicly available database is critical in the context of climate change, which is altering hydrological conditions and intensifying conflicts over the water resource management. Environmental flows involve not only the tension between energy production and river ecology but also considerations of water quality and other uses, such as drinking water supply, agricultural irrigation, cooling, and the operation of wastewater treatment plants. For sustainable water management, it is crucial to establish a public and reliable database that balances competing interests.
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- Wechsler, T., et al. (2025b). Auswirkungen der Restwasserbestimmungen auf die Wasserkraftproduktion in der Schweiz. Aqua Viva.
- Wechsler T., Schirmer M., Bryner A. (2025c). Restwasser. Die Suche nach der angemessenen Menge – Festlegung, Wirkung und Anforderungen. Aqua Gas. 105(3).
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- Wechsler, T., et al. (2023). Verringert ein höherer Q347-Wert die Wasserkraftproduktion? Die schweizerischen Restwasserbestimmungen anhand von vier Laufkraftwerken. Wasser, Energie, Luft, 115(1).
How to cite: Wechsler, T.: Open data on environmental flows: supporting decision-making to balance climate change impacts, biodiversity loss, and energy transition, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-119, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-119, 2026.
Climate change and biodiversity loss are tightly linked and among the most urgent global challenges. Switzerland aims for net-zero CO2 emissions by 2050 while conserving biodiversity, which accelerates the transition to renewable energy. With the Federal Act on the Secure Supply of Electricity from Renewable Energy Sources, understanding and minimizing the ecological impacts of solar parks has become urgent. In its Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan, the Federal Office for the Environment calls for integrating biodiversity into energy planning. Despite political incentives, major knowledge gaps remain on how ground-mounted photovoltaic (PV) parks affect biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, and ecosystem services, especially in temperate regions. High-alpine PV parks are particularly controversial: their production profile could help mitigate the winter electricity shortfall, but they may also increase pressure on sensitive alpine ecosystems. Empirical evidence is limited and rarely comparable across sites and elevations. Key unknowns include which taxa and ecological functions are most sensitive, whether responses differ along elevational gradients, and how impacts relate to the surrounding landscapes and legacy.
To close these gaps, we propose a standardized research scheme for nationwide implementation. The scheme integrates assessments of solar panel impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning below- and aboveground, and on ecosystem services such as soil formation, biomass production (e.g. for fodder), pollination, and regulation of the microclimate. Microclimatic variables are measured to relate local conditions to broader climate patterns, while vegetation dynamics are analyzed in the context of surrounding landscapes and land-use legacies. Standardized surveys of vegetation, soil microbes, and arthropods provide comprehensive insights to biodiversity responses. These are complemented by assessments of polarized-light effects on insects and birds and by evaluating habitat provisioning through increased structural complexity. Implemented nationwide, the scheme would generate the evidence base needed to guide a biodiversity-friendly expansion of solar energy and support an energy transition which aligns with Switzerland's Biodiversity Goals.
How to cite: Gossner, M., Schuh, L., Rixen, C., Kempel, A., Boch, S., Zellweger, F., Cordero, I., and Flury, R.: A standardized research design to assess the impacts of solar parks on biodiversity and ecosystem services across Switzerland, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-1014, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-1014, 2026.
