Abstract
The aim of this report was to prepare a guidance document for the Baltic Sea Region, which would specifically target the impacts of offshore wind farms on biodiversity in the more Northern parts of the Baltic Sea (marine areas of Sweden, Finland, Estonia and Latvia). Nevertheless, the Guidelines do not provide a very detailed description of methodologies for environmental impact investigations – the exact methodologies have to be chosen depending on the conditions of the particular project area -, but rather outline the general requirements based on the state of the art knowledge – what is the objective of such study, which parameters have to be measured for different features of the marine ecosystem, when and how frequently the investigations have to be performed.