Environmental research and development programmes

Climate and Ecosystems

Our Climate and Ecosystems research team focuses on the linkages between climatic variability and marine ecosystem structure and functioning. We seek to better understand the relationships between past and current-day climatic forcing, locally-observed physical variables, and ecological parameters such as primary production and food quality, trophic structure and energy flow through food webs, and functional responses of individual organisms (e.g. growth rate, reproduction). Using arctic benthic communities as test systems, our goal is to provide new perspectives on the manifestations of future climate change in the arctic.

Biodiversity and taxonomy

Our Biodiversity and Taxonomy research team focuses on understanding the natural diversity of organisms at the population, ’species’, individual and genetic level as well as the positive and negative impacts on aquatic biodiversity that result from anthropogenic influences. Benthic and pelagic invertebrate organisms in fresh-water systems and benthic invertebrates in the marine environment are our main expertise.

Ecotoxicology

Our Ecotoxicology research team investigates spatial and temporal patterns in polar environmental contamination (persistent organic pollutants, radionuclides, and heavy metals) in combination with ecotoxicological and food web bioaccumulation processes for freshwater and marine organisms and ecosystems. Our main focus area is the Norwegian Arctic the geographic coverage of our projects are wide, including Russia, Antarctica and Norwegian coastal areas.

Environment and Petroleum

Our Environment and Petroleum team performs research into the acute and chronic effects of petroleum hydrocarbons for arctic organisms, combined with arctic marine biology and ecology studies, resulting in a holistic perspective of the potential short and long term impacts of petroleum activities in cold climates.

Physical Oceanography & Modelling

Our Physical Oceanography and Modelling research team conducts field oceanographic investigations and numerical modeling experiments into the three-dimensional spatial and temporal coupling between physical and marine ecosystem dynamics, with specialized experience into the coastal areas of Northern Norway, Svalbard, and the Barents Sea.

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