Offshore energy production has been a rising industry in the North Sea since the past century and will likely gain more importance in the future with the increasing development of renewable alternatives. The platforms that are responsible for harvesting and producing energy provide a hard substrate in areas where most substrate is soft, establishing a habitat for fouling communities to settle and to grow on. With time, these communities start to compose a problem for energy production companies, as their natural increase in biomass may pose risks to the platform foundations, leading to the necessity of performing regular inspection so the installations can keep working properly. To address this issue and to better understand how cleaning efforts can be directed, a model was created to relate the growth of these fouling communities with different environmental variables. The variables tested were related to sea surface salinity and temperature, seafloor topography, distance to shore, depth, current and wind velocity, fish abundance, concentration of suspended particulate matter and chlorophyll and presence or absence of artificial structures. Our results indicated that depth and chlorophyll concentration in the water column where the main factors affecting biomass variations in fouling communities.

中文翻译：

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荷兰北海海上平台大型污垢群落厚度变化建模

自上个世纪以来，海上能源生产一直是北海的新兴产业，随着可再生能源的不断发展，未来可能会变得更加重要。负责收集和生产能量的平台在大多数基质柔软的区域提供坚硬的基质，为污染社区建立栖息地并在其上生长。随着时间的推移，这些社区开始给能源生产公司带来问题，因为他们自然增加的生物量可能对平台基础构成风险，导致需要定期检查，以便设施保持正常工作。为了解决这个问题并更好地了解如何指导清洁工作，创建了一个模型，将这些污染群落的增长与不同的环境变量联系起来。测试的变量与海面盐度和温度、海底地形、到海岸的距离、深度、水流和风速、鱼类丰度、悬浮颗粒物和叶绿素的浓度以及人工结构的存在与否有关。我们的结果表明，水体中的深度和叶绿素浓度是影响污垢群落生物量变化的主要因素。