Technology Matters: Water use Need for flat graded land (e.g., solar trough and tracking PV need flatter sites) (all technologies prefer less than 5% slope) Inflexible design: Minimum size requirements for some solar thermal based on turbine size and efficiency Multiple small units (patch-size) can may avoid some key habitat but increase fragmentation and edge effects. Mirrors, concentrated heat and light and superheated air (solar trough and power tower) may cause significant impacts to birds and invertebrates.

Highest Solar Resources and Desert Tortoise Habitat Nussear et al. (USGS 2009) “Modeling Habitat of the Desert Tortoise” Highest Solar Resources and Desert Tortoise Habitat California Solar Resources APRIL 2005 CEC-500-2005-072-D

Impacts of each technology may differ depending on the species and habitats at issue as well as in the context of other threats to those species. Photos L. Cunningham

Some of the many unanswered questions related to scale: Will the impacts of larger projects be directly proportionate to size? Are their non-linear impacts that will be significantly greater from very large scale projects? Can other impacts be reduced by clustering large projects to minimize edge effects and additional transmission and other auxiliary structures? How can we assess cumulative impacts at the appropriate scale to protect the resources? impacts of fragmentation/loss of connectivity and edge effects