How do you decide where to build a power plant when you don’t know everything about the area you are putting it in?

That’s the question facing federal regulators and environmental scientists as offshore wind developers gear up to build hundreds, perhaps thousands, of wind turbines in New England’s coastal waters.

“Sometimes we have a better idea about how species use habitats and the habitats themselves in some places in the ocean than we do in others,” Tricia Jedele, offshore wind policy manager for The Nature Conservancy, said in a webinar on Thursday afternoon. “We need to know a lot more about these important ocean spaces and how animals use them, but we also need to build offshore wind in time to mitigate the worst effects of climate change.”

Part of the problem, said Jedele, is that life under the ocean is far from static. Species’ populations, patterns, and ecosystems constantly change, and gathering data is difficult, expensive, and time-consuming.

“I think it would be super challenging to try and make decisions in the planning process based on potential future conditions,” said Jocelyn Runnebaum, a marine scientist from TNC’s Maine office, “because there’s a lot of variability in what could happen.”

The Gulf of Maine for example, said Runnebaum, has deep-sea coral that is vital for underwater habitats and vulnerable to disturbances. Part of the process of readying the gulf for offshore wind development involves organizations like TNC recording observations and studies about the current location and health of the coral. The current data set for the coral is more than 20 years out of date, and re-mapping its locations is vital information the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) needs to eliminate areas for offshore wind siting.

And countries are seeking to deploy offshore wind as fast as possible. The Global Offshore Wind Alliance, a consortium of countries around the globe, has pledged to install 380 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030. The United States alone is on track to build nearly 50 gigawatts of offshore wind by the end of the decade.

Last year Rhode Island, in collaboration with Massachusetts and Connecticut, issued a single request for proposal (RFP) for offshore wind that would include all three states seeking up to 3,600 megawatts of electricity.

For BOEM, the federal agency in charge of incubating offshore wind sites, the name of the game is to gradually remove areas from consideration and limit the amount of natural resource conflicts that could occur.

Just this year, BOEM announced it was opening eight proposed leases areas in the Gulf of Maine, projected to generate about 15 gigawatts of power. The agency is expected to finalize its environmental impact reports later this summer, with an eye to having a lease area auction in October.

Seth Theuerkauf, a renewable energy program specialist with BOEM, said the final lease areas drawn in the Gulf of Maine had been reduced by 80% to avoid use conflicts and still meet Maine’s renewable energy goals.

“Information received from the public, partner government agencies, and stakeholders is really a cornerstone of BOEM’s lease siting process and drives us forward to those least conflicted ocean areas for offshore wind leasing,” Theuerkauf said.

The Aug. 22 webinar was the second in an offshore wind series open to the public examining the processes and problems regarding its development. The series launched last month with a webinar on the cost of electricity compared to natural gas, and TNC has said a future discussion will focus on whales.

Offshore wind siting has become a hot topic in Rhode Island, propelled somewhat by misinformation campaigns regarding its alleged impacts on fish habitat and wildlife.

It’s not the only renewable energy resource to receive pushback. Over the past 10 years in Rhode Island, community groups and residents have gathered in almost every municipality to oppose ground-mounted solar installations that clear-cut forestland and eliminate green space, as opposed to building on already-developed land.

TNC has scheduled its next webinar on offshore wind for Sept. 12 at noon.