DOI: 10.5061/dryad.1jwstqk77
title: Data for: Bibliographic synthesis of biodiversity-relevant criteria for solar energy siting

description: The widespread expansion of solar energy generation promises to help
 mitigate global-scale threats from climate change while potentially
 impacting biodiversity at local scales. Developers must attempt to
 maximize solar energy production while minimizing conflicts with
 biodiversity conservation, particularly as calls for the conservation of
 30% of the world’s land and sea area gain traction. Here, we
 bibliographically synthesized peer-reviewed solar suitability analyses
 that attempt to optimize locations most suitable for solar development and
 convened a panel of energy experts to contextualize the use of
 biodiversity-relevant criteria in siting solar installations. We found
 that biodiversity-relevant criteria seemed to be used in solar suitability
 analyses primarily to meet legal requirements, and, thus, may not
 adequately account for the potential effects of solar infrastructure on
 local and/or regional biodiversity. The expert panel identified two
 primary barriers to incorporating biodiversity-relevant criteria into
 solar suitability analyses: a lack of quality data at relevant scales and
 weak regulatory requirements that govern how biodiversity concerns are
 incorporated into solar siting. Solar energy development and biodiversity
 conservation address the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity
 loss, and the inclusion of biodiversity-relevant criteria into solar
 suitability analyses can ensure their goals remain aligned.
description: # Data for: Bibliographic synthesis of biodiversity-relevant criteria for
 solar energy siting Dataset DOI:
 [10.5061/dryad.1jwstqk77](10.5061/dryad.1jwstqk77) ## Description of the
 data and file structure This data was collected as part of a bibliographic
 synthesis of spatially-explicit siting analyses for large, ground-mounted
 photovoltaic solar energy facilities in the peer-reviewed literature.
 These analyses use various criteria in an attempt to optimize locations
 most suitable for solar development in a landscape of interest. Our goal
 was to determine whether and how these analyses make use of criteria
 related to biodiversity. This repository contains a .tsv file with the
 results of that literature review and several R markdown files with the R
 code used to facilitate our analysis and visualization of those results.
 ### Files and variables #### File:
 FINAL_Solar_Suitability_Analysis_Literature_Review.Rproj
 **Description:** This R Project file contains the individual R Markdown
 files and organizes them into a workflow. Opening this file will open
 R-Studio and load the five markdown files. #### File:
 1._Setup_and_Data_Preparation.Rmd **Description:** This R Markdown file
 loads the various packages needed to manipulate and analyze the raw data
 in the
 Solar_Suitability_Analysis_Literature_Review_Data_criteriaReview_6.1.23_SSA_LitReview_Update.tsv file, then cleans and produces the dataframe on which all analyses take place. #### File: 2._Metastatistics_and_General_Corpus_Information.Rmd **Description:** This Markdown file contains code to calculate various general statistics about the corpus and the criteria present within it. #### File: 3._Biodiversity-Relevant_Criteria.Rmd **Description:** This Markdown file contains code to specifically examine those criteria within the corpus identified as biodiversity relevant. #### File: 4._Non_Biodiversity-Relevant_Criteria.Rmd **Description:** This Markdown file contains code to examine non-biodiversity-relevant criteria. #### File: 5._Figures.Rmd **Description:** This Markdown file contains code to produce the visualizations contained in the manuscript associated with this analysis. ## Code/software The free software programs R and R-Studio are needed to view our data and markdown workflows. We used R version 4.5.1 and R-Studio version 2024.04.0+735.pro3 (Chocolate cosmos). We used two packages within R to complete our analyses: *tidyverse* and *tidytext*. ## Access information Other publicly accessible locations of the data: * The database of manuscripts assessed for this bibliographic synthesis can be found in the Supplementary Material of the associated manuscript published in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews. Data was derived from the following sources: * Data was derived from the individual publications assessed in this bibliographic synthesis, the title and urls of which can be found in the database in this repository. The bibliographic synthesis itself was conduced in the SCOPUS abstract and citation database.