Photo: Christina A. Pedersen (NPI)
Cross-cutting flagship activities
Encouraging cross-disciplinary collaboration across the four Ny-Ålesund flagships has been a priority in Ny-Ålesund.
Nutrient cycles in the Arctic
A new project – Nutrient cycle – linking the Atmosphere, Terrestrial, Marine and Glaciological flagship programmes in Ny-Ålesund – aims to strengthen this collaboration between researchers and research groups even further. The projects has received funding from the Research Council of Norway through the Svalbard Strategic Grant programme.
The aim of the project is to increase our understanding of perturbations in nutrient cycles in the Arctic linked to ongoing environmental change. With nutrient cycling being a component in all parts of the ecosystem, a cross-disciplinary and cross-flagship approach is needed to build a comprehensive understanding of the different mechanisms involved.
The project will present an overview of current knowledge, identify gaps and develop hypotheses and research questions to be addressed through a joint effort from all four flagship programmes.
Field measurements, remote sensing data and modelling from researchers from a wide range of fields, from multiple institutions and from several locations on Svalbard, will provide key input to these processes.
A series of activities within the framework of the project, such as keynote seminars, a workshop in Italy in the fall of 2020, and a series of writing workshops, will lead up to a series of scientific publications, and to presentations at the Svalbard Science Conference 2021.
Keynote seminar
In October 2020 a series of keynote seminars were arranged online as an appetizer for the open workshop in 2021. The lectures were recorded and are available for download below.
Programme (title and speakers)
- Dust in polar regions and its importance for nutrient cycles, Pavla Dagsson-Waldhauserova, Agricultural University of Iceland, Iceland (Vimeo)
- Nutrient dynamics and their control of the biological production in the Kongsfjorden coastal system, Fran Gordillo, University of Malaga, Spain (Vimeo)
- Dynamics of glacial nutrient delivery to Kongsfjorden, Andy Hodson, UNIS, Norway (Vimeo)
- Transport, deposition and fate of atmospheric nutrients in the Ny-Ålesund region, Mats Björkman, University of Gothenburg, Sweden (Vimeo)
- The effect of trophic interactions on terrestrial nutrient cycles, Maarten Loonen, University of Groningen, The Netherland (Vimeo)
- Nutrient inputs by marine vertebrates are a major driver of polar terrestrial biodiversity hotspots, Peter Convey, BAS-NERC, UK (Vimeo)
- Abiotic and biotic driven nutrient exchanges in a high-latitude fjord – towards the quantification of Net Ecosystem Metabolism, Pedro Duarte, Norwegian Polar Institute, Norway (Vimeo)
