Solar energy-driven land cover change could alter landscapes critical to animal movement in the continental United States

The United States may produce as much as 45% of its electricity using solar energy technology by 2050, which could require more than 40,000 km2 of land to be converted to large-scale solar energy production facilities. Little is known about how such development may impact animal movement. Here, we use five spatially-explicit projections of solar energy development through 2050 to assess the extent to which ground-mounted photovoltaic solar energy expansion in the continental United States may impact land cover and alter areas important for animal movement. Our results suggest that there could be a substantial overlap between solar energy development and land important for animal movement: across projections, 7-17% of total development is expected to occur on land with high value for movement between large protected areas, while 27-33% of total development is expected to occur on land with high value for climate-change-induced migration. We also found substantial variation in the potential overlap of development and land important for movement at the state level. Solar energy development, and the policies that shape it, may align goals for biodiversity and climate change by incorporating the preservation of animal movement as a consideration in the planning process.

Methods
Data was collected from the Net-Zero America Project's spatial projects of renewable energy development, accessible at https://maps.princeton.edu/?bbox=-138.955078+-3.425692+-27.861328+62.995158&q=netzeroamerica&search_field=all_fields&utf8=%E2%9C%93

Data describing corridors between large protected areas was collected from 'Identifying Corridors among Large Protected Areas in the United States' by Belote et al. 2016, and is accessible at http://www.conservationgateway.org/ConservationByGeography/NorthAmerica/UnitedStates/edc/reportsdata/terrestrial/resilience/Pages/Downloads.aspx

Resilisnt and Connected Landscapes was collected from The Nature Conservancy, and is accessible at http://www.conservationgateway.org/ConservationByGeography/NorthAmerica/UnitedStates/edc/reportsdata/terrestrial/resilience/Pages/Downloads.aspx

National Land Cover Database data was collected within Google Earth Engine, which is where all data were processed and analyses took place.