Arctic, Circumpolar: projects/activities

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Directory entires that have specified Arctic, Circumpolar as one of the geographic regions for the project/activity and are included in the AMAP, ENVINET, SAON and SEARCH directories. Note that the list of regions is not hierarchical, and there is no relation between regions (e.g. a record tagged with Nunavut may not be tagged with Canada). To see the full list of regions, see the regions list. To browse the catalog based on the originating country (leady party), see the list of countries.

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Displaying: 1 - 7 of 7
1. National Survey of Forest Soils and Vegetation

 

This project has been divided into two new projects: The Swedish Forest Soil Inventory and the Swedish National Forest Inventory.

The Swedish National Forest Inventory has the task of describing the state and changes in Sweden's forests. The inventory gathers basic information on forests, soils and vegetation. It includes most aspects concerning soils, for example: soil types, soil chemistry including organic matter, water conditions and content of stones and boulders. Acidification, nitrogen deposition and the contribution by soils to climate change are some of the current issues dealt with. Regularly reported variables are: forest state, injuries, and growth, logging operations, new forest stand, and environmental assessment. Invented variables on permanent sampling plots include: position in the landscape, field vegetation, site conditions, soil sampling, assesment of soil characteristics, chemical analysis of soil in O-, B-, BC- and C-horizons.

acidification Biodiversity Biological effects Contaminant transport Data management Ecosystems Environmental management forest Forest damage Geochemistry Geology GIS Long-range transport Mapping Modelling Pathways Soils Spatial trends Temporal trends vegetation
2. INTERACTIONS

Important progress has been made in recent decades to describe and understand how arctic terrestrial vertebrate interact, especially concerning predator-prey interactions. Indirect interactions between different prey species modulated by shared predators (e.g. Arctic fox) are believed to have important impacts on the structure and/or dynamics of some communities. Yet, our understanding of these types of interactions is still fragmentary. To fill that gap, we will build on ongoing projects exploring related questions in Canada (Marie-Andrée Giroux, Nicolas Lecomte, Joël Bêty) and Greenland (Olivier Gilg, Niels M. Schmidt), while taking advantage of existing networks (ADSN in North America and “Interactions” program in Greenland and Eurasia). The aim of the project is to promote the implementation of several common protocols that will (1) improve each collaborator’s knowledge at the site level and, more importantly, that will (2) be merged across sites and years to improve our understanding of the functioning and the influence of indirect interactions on arctic vertebrate communities in general.

Five types of data have been identified (by the 5 initiators of the project already mentioned above) as being mandatories to answer questions related to this topic. These data sets will be collected using 5 specific protocols described in the following chapters:

  1. Monitor predation pressure using artificial nests
  2. Monitor real predation pressure on Calidris nests using Tiny Tags
  3. Observations of predators and lemmings (3b: fox scats DNA barcoding)
  4. Assessing lemming (or “rodent”) relative abundance using different methods
  5. Assessing “herbivores” (excl. rodents) relative abundance using “faeces transects”
Arctic Biodiversity Biological effects Biology Climate change Diet Ecosystems Environmental management Food webs Modelling Populations Reproduction Spatial trends Temporal trends Terrestrial mammals
3. FUVIRC-Finnish Ultraviolet International Research Centre

FUVIRC will serve ecosystem research, human health research and atmospheric chemistry research by providing UV monitoring data and guidance (i.e. calibration of instruments, maintenance of field test sites), research facilities (laboratories and accommodation), instruments and equipment.

Arctic Atmosphere Biodiversity Biological effects Biology Climate change Ecosystems Forest damage Geophysics Human health ozone Populations Reindeer Temporal trends UV radiation
4. LAPBIAT-Lapland Atmosphere-Biosphere facility

The main objective of the facility is to enhance the international scientific co-operation at the seven Finnish research stations and to offer a very attractive and unique place for multidisciplinary environmental and atmospheric research in the most arctic region of the European Union. Factors such as, arctic-subarctic and alpine-subalpine environment, northern populations, arctic winters with snow, changes in the Earth's electromagnetic environment due to external disturbances and exceptionally long series of observations of many ecological and atmospheric variables should interest new users.

Arctic Atmosphere Atmospheric processes Biodiversity Biological effects Biology Climate Climate change Climate variability Data management Ecosystems Emissions Environmental management Exposure Geophysics Human health Local pollution Long-range transport Modelling ozone Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) Populations Reindeer Spatial trends Temporal trends UV radiation
5. Living in a spatially structured environment: evolutionary ecology of seabird-parasite interactions

The aim of this research program is to examine the response of animal populations to environmental variability at different spatial scales. We attempt to determine how individuals respond to the spatial heterogeneity of their environment, and what are the consequences of this response for the dynamics of subdivided populations. Specifically, we consider an ecological system involving biotic interactions at three levels: seabirds, their tick _Ixodes uriae_, and the microparasite _Borrelia burgdorferi_ sensu lato (Lyme disease agent). Colonies of seabirds represent discrete entities, within and among which parasites can circulate. Our previous work on this system in the norwegian arctic has enable us to show that (1) host dispersal can be affected by local conditions, (2) seabird tick populations are specialised among different host species, namely between sympatric kittiwakes _Rissa tridactyla_ and puffins _Fratercula arctica_, (3) in the kittiwake, females transmit antibodies against _Borrelia burgdorferi_ when their chicks have a high probability to be exposed to the tick vector. We propose to combine different approaches, incorporating field surveys and experiments and population genetic studies (of hosts and parasites), in order to better understand the role of local interactions and dispersal in the dynamics of such a system. The research program implies collaborations with researchers from other french groups, as well as with Canadian (Queen’s University) and Norwegian colleagues (from NINA and the University of Tromsø).

Biology Populations Epidemiology Evolutionary ecology Spatial trends Biodiversity Seabirds Ecosystems
6. Study of bioactive compounds from arctic plants

Study of secondary metabolites and peptides produced by arctic plants. The aim of the project is the chemical and biochemical analysis of arctic plants such as Saxifraga spp., Artemisia borealis and Pedicularis dasyantha and others, for the search of compounds (secondary metabolites and peptides) to be employed as potential new drugs The basic working program in the arctic base will focus on the collection and preliminary work up (extraction, initial fractionation) of vegetal tissues from arctic plant species and their storage for the subsequent finer analyses

Pedicularis dasyantha Biology Saxifraga compounds analysis chemical and biochemical analysis of arctic plants Biodiversity Arctic data collection secondary metabolites and peptides Artemisia borealis Data management
7. Lake Myvatn and the River Laxá

The aim is to monitor the Lake Myvatn and the river Laxá ecosystem for (1) detecting trends, (2) detecting background variability in the system, (3) assess the efficiency of management measures, (4) observe perturbations in order to generate hypotheses about causal relationships.

Biological effects Biology Populations Catchment studies Fish Spatial trends Environmental management Mining Waterbirds Modelling Biodiversity Arctic Local pollution Food webs Sediments Diet Temporal trends Ecosystems