Ole Arve Misund is new UNIS director
20 December 2011
Ole Arve Misund (57) will take over as director of the University Centre in Svalbard after Gunnar Sand. Misund has worked at the Institute of Marine Research (IMR) for the past 25 years, and is looking forward to start his new position on Svalbard next year.
Millions to study the zooplankton
17 December 2011
The Arctic marine biology group at UNIS has gotten over 12 million NOK from the Research Council of Norway to investigate the vertical migration rhythms of Arctic zooplankton during the Polar Night. – This is genuinely a new and innovative project that will give us important new knowledge about processes that have hitherto been poorly understood, says Professor Jørgen Berge at UNIS.
New knowledge about surging glaciers
13 December 2011
New research by PhD candidate Monica Sund show that the dynamics of both surge- and tidewater glaciers must be taken into consideration when assessing the glaciers’ response to climate change. Sund will defend her PhD on 15 December at the University of Oslo.
Snow avalanches in Longyearbyen
6 December 2011
Avalanche season is getting closer. What dangers and what factors do you need to take into consideration when you travel by snowmobiles or by ski around Longyearbyen? New UNIS research can now give you some answers.
Plants on the run: Can High Arctic species survive climate change?
10 November 2011
As temperature increases, High Arctic plants need to migrate to find new suitable habitats. Sexual reproduction and dispersal abilities will be critical survival factors. In his PhD thesis, Eike Müller concludes that these plants produce viable seeds and disperse well, thus their fate may not be extinction. Müller will defend his PhD thesis on 16 November at UNIS.
Warm water reappears in Spitsbergen fjords
4 November 2011
Oceanographic measurements along western Spitsbergen show that the warm water is back in the fjords. This is due to inflow of warm Atlantic water from the shelf outside the fjords, as a result of large production of sea ice in the fjords and along the shelf area last winter. So the prospect of solid fjord ice cover in winter 2012 is bleak, however, the wind climate over Svalbard will be the deciding factor for whether there will be ice or not.
Helicopter wreck rediscovered
30 September 2011
A helicopter crashed and sank in Adventfjorden in December 2003, never to be seen again – until last week. An underwater robot was cruising at 70 meters depth to take images of the ocean floor for a UNIS research project, when it hit upon the remains of the helicopter.
Aliens with latitude
23 September 2011
New research shows that humans can unwittingly bring alien plant species to Svalbard. Increased travel activity and expected temperature increases over the next decades, may make the establishment of new plant species in the archipelago’s vulnerable ecosystem possible. This calls for a closer look at the management policy for travelling to Svalbard.
A long journey for terrestrial invertebrates
20 September 2011
Invertebrates play a very important role in Arctic ecosystems, but very little is known about their recent history. PhD candidate María Luisa Ávila Jiménez has studied the biogeographical factors in order to define the distribution of invertebrate species in the Arctic and Svalbard. Jiménez will defend her PhD thesis on 22 September at UNIS.