| Title | The science questions underpinning the potential for offshore wind turbines on Atlantic Canada's continental shelves |
| Download | Downloads |
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| Licence | Please note the adoption of the Open Government Licence - Canada
supersedes any previous licences. |
| Author | Eamer, J B R ;
Greaves, C; King, E L |
| Source | Geological Survey of Canada, Scientific Presentation 158, 2023, 1 sheet, https://doi.org/10.4095/331697  Open Access |
| Image |  |
| Year | 2023 |
| Publisher | Natural Resources Canada |
| Meeting | Atlantic Geoscience Society Colloquium; Truro; CA; February 3-5, 2023 |
| Document | serial |
| Lang. | English |
| Media | digital; on-line |
| File format | pdf |
| Province | Nova Scotia; Newfoundland and Labrador; Eastern offshore region |
| NTS | 11G; 11H; 11J; 11K; 11N; 11O |
| Lat/Long WENS | -62.0000 -58.0000 47.5000 44.0000 |
| Subjects | economic geology; Economics and Industry; Health and Safety; sedimentology; Science and Technology; marine environments; sediment stability; Scotian Shelf; Wind; Wind energy; Renewable energy; Renewable
resources |
| Illustrations | cross-sections; location maps; tables; diagrams |
| Program | Marine Geoscience for Marine Spatial Planning |
| Released | 2023 03 29 |
| Abstract | Offshore wind farms typically host tens to hundreds of turbines that are individually sited on foundations or anchored if floating. These are connected by inter-farm cables which feed into one or more
marine-based substations, further feeding one or more shore-connected high-voltage cables - all infrastructure that requires knowledge of water depth, metocean conditions, and seabed/subsurface geology. With this industry set to establish itself on
the continental shelf of Atlantic Canada, knowledge of the geological conditions from the seabed to tens of metres below will be essential for farm layout and foundation design. Thus, geoscience questions addressing regional geomorphology,
Pleistocene glacial retreat and sea-level change, the characteristics of key individual stratigraphic layers, and the magnitude and patterns of sediment mobility are important. In Atlantic Canada, ongoing efforts to address these questions are using
legacy data, but new data is required to further our understanding of the shallower portions of the shelf. Examples include: what is the distribution of buried tunnel valleys under offshore banks, and might their complex facies infill affect
foundation conditions? How and where would the organic sediments, left by a coastal suite of landforms drowned during transgression, affect foundation or landfalling cable stability? How active is salt diapirism, and could it be considered a
geohazard? Are demonstrated sediment mass failures also a risk? What is the current understanding of sediment mobility in shallow waters, and how does that affect infrastructure armouring/depth of burial? What is the variability of the geotechnical
properties of our offshore sediments? What is the foundation suitability of offshore Tertiary semi-consolidated bedrock? To conclude, the initial scope of a developing regional foundation suitability model will be presented for the Eastern Scotian
Shelf. |
| Summary | (Plain Language Summary, not published)
A great deal of infrastructure is associated with an offshore wind park, and the engineering of that infrastructure requires detailed knowledge of the
offshore geology. While is a growing global inventory of offshore wind energy projects to draw information on, Atlantic Canada's geology is globally unique, and a number of research questions have been developed that are related to hazards, the
sediments left behind from the ice age, sediments altered by changes in sea level, geological salt formations, a changing seabed, and the engineering properties of the sediment. |
| GEOSCAN ID | 331697 |
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