Avian deaths and wind farms: potential AS essay topic

I have just read an article discussing the presumed devastating effect wind farms have on the bird and bat populations. The article does accept the assertions that the turbines do cause death but then discusses faults in the studies that produce these conclusions. The article then discusses the authors own research, which investigates the different forms of energy supply (fossil fuel stations, nuclear stations and wind farms) and the number of bird deaths atributed to each source. I can spot a slightly dodgy aspect to the research in that he extrapolates deaths caused by climate change (which cannot be solely attributable to fossil fuel staions) but that only adds to the discussion that can be created around this issue.

As well as straight forward biological discussions on habitat destruction and an interesting issue about barotrauma in bats this article does prompt a healthy debate about the scientific methods involved in the various studies. I think it lends itself very well to the AS extended essay coursework and so thought I would draw your attention to it. The link is below:

Save Birds by Promoting Wind Energy

I have also added the pdf file here: sovacool-contextualizing_avian_20mortality , in case the web-link disappears.

Ever thought about using quarries as a topic for a coursework essay?

Obvious now I think of it, quarries are an excellent topic for the AS coursework essay and the QuarryEd website provides some excellent resources.

To quote the homepage:

“Although perhaps unlikely at a first glance, the extractive industry can provide learning opportunities for students of A level biology, such as species adaptations to survive in particular environmental conditions, ecosystem dynamics, succession, the ecological impact of human activities and nature conservation management techniques.”

Lots of downloadable information sheets.