Fig 1.
Prioritization for each species (in this example, the ferruginous hawk) begins with the calculation of 3 turbine risk metrics and 1 conservation status metric. Then random cutoff values are repeatedly drawn to assign each metric value to a low, medium, or high category. These categories are used to determine a priority score for each iteration, which can be summarized across all iterations.
Table 1.
The risk metrics used in the prioritization, their equations, and data required.
Table 2.
Overall priority assignment.
Fig 2.
Turbine risk metric distributions.
Frequencies of the (a) percentage of total US fatality due to wind turbines for 166 North American bird species, (b) Fatality Risk Index for 179 North American bird species, and (c) Indirect Risk Index for 418 North American bird species.
Fig 3.
Turbine risk metrics by order.
Box plots showing the distribution of (a) proportion of fatality caused by turbines on a log scale, (b) Fatality Risk Index, and (c) Indirect Risk Index within avian orders. Whiskers span the minimum and maximum observed values, the box encloses the middle 50%, and the horizontal line indicates the median value.
Fig 4.
The distribution of average overall priority score (a) across avian species and (b) within avian orders for 428 species that occur in the conterminous US. Higher values indicate higher priority and greater potential risk from wind facilities.
Table 3.
High priority avian species.