The promoted erection and operation of wind power plants in offshore regions causes severe impacts on the abiotic and biotic marine system. These influences can cause long-term changes in the local hydrographic and morphological egime. These effects can be divided into constructional and operational induced impacts, like turbidity within the water column or modified currents and sea bed erosion. Hence a numerical modelling was carried out which involves real data of a certain windpark area to simulate possible effects of wind power plants on the North Sea system.
Based on the hydrodynamic model, which integrates field data from the DanTysk investigation area, a modelling was carried out to simulate the spreading of suspended sediment discharged by dredging/coring. The transport of sea bed sediments was also simulated to identify significant scours around the foundations. These models were applied on two different scales, on the one hand
for the whole offshore wind farm and on the other hand for a single monopile.
The results of this modelling prove no significant effect of the monopile foundation on the area to the hydrological and morphological situation. There are marginal changes of currents and local scours behind and around the pile, which can be neglected on the scale of the whole wind farm.