Publications
NIBIOs employees contribute to several hundred scientific articles and research reports every year. You can browse or search in our collection which contains references and links to these publications as well as other research and dissemination activities. The collection is continously updated with new and historical material.
2009
Authors
Ole Martin Eklo Marit Almvik Randi Bolli Trond Børresen Terje Haraldsen Lars Egil Haugen Roger Holten Gunnhild RiiseAbstract
No abstract has been registered
Abstract
No abstract has been registered
Authors
Jorunn Elisabeth Olsen Anna Holefors Lars Morten Opseth Daniel Asante Olavi Junttila Jørgen Aleksander Mølmann Igor A. Yakovlev Carl Fossdal Øystein JohnsenAbstract
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Authors
Bolette Bele Hanne Sickel Tor Lunnan Ann Norderhaug Marianne Østerlie Roger K. Abrahamsen Liv Sigrid Nilsen Mikael OhlsonAbstract
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Authors
Karl ThunesAbstract
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Abstract
Introduction: Current risk assessment procedures for contaminated land and for pesticides often fail to properly characterize the risk of chemicals for environment or human health and provide only a rough estimate of the potential risk of chemicals. Chemicals often occur in mixtures in the environment, while regulatory agencies often use a chemical-by-chemical approach, focusing on a single media, a single source, and a single toxic endpoint. Current concepts to estimate biological effects of chemical mixtures mainly rely on data available for single chemicals, disregarding interaction between chemicals in soils. The importance of soil microbes and their activity in the functioning of soils impose a need to include microorganisms in soil quality assessments (Winding et al., 2005) including terrestrial ecotoxicological studies. Numerous papers have been published on the effects of different contaminants on soil microbes, establishing changes in soil microbial diversity as an indicator of soil pollution, but only a limited number of molecular studies investigating fungal diversity in the environment have been performed. The main objective of the study presented here, is to assess the applicability of changes in soil microbial diversity and activity levels as indicators of ecologically relevant effects of chemicals contamination. We have studied the effects of the fungicide picoxystrobin and the chemical 4-n-nonylphenol, on the microbial biodiversity in a Norwegian sandy loam with focus both on prokaryotes and the fungal species. 4-n-nonylphenol is a chemical occurring in high amounts in sewage sludge, hence, these chemicals may occur as single chemicals as well as in mixtures in soils. This work is part of the research project ‘Bioavailability and biological effects of chemicals - Novel tools in risk assessment of mixtures in agricultural and contaminated soils" funded by the Norwegian research council.Methods: Soil samples were treated with the single chemicals or mixtures and incubated at 20°C. Continuous monitoring of respiration activity as well as occasional destructive sampling for extraction of soil DNA, RNA, and chemical residues was performed through a 70 d period. Amplification of soil bacterial and fungal DNA was followed by T-RFLP analysis to assess chemicals effects on soil microbial diversity. Further work will include analyses of extracted soil RNA to assess chemicals effects on important soil functions (e.g. nitrogen cycling, decomposition of organic matter) and an assessment of chemicals effects on the genetic diversity of the soil by high throughput shot-gun sequencing. Finally the results will be evaluated to assess the suitability of any specific group, species or activity/function as biomarker for the selected chemicals (and possibly their group of chemicals).Results and conclusions: A project outline and preliminary results from the project will be presented at the conference.ReferencesWinding A, Hund-Rinke K, Rutgers M (2005). The use of microorganisms in ecological soil classification and assessment concepts. Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety 62: 230-248.
Abstract
No abstract has been registered
Authors
Christian Guido Bruckner Hans-Peter Grossart Peter, G. KrothAbstract
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Authors
David Bredström Petrus Jönsson Mikael RönnqvistAbstract
A cost efficient use of harvesting resources is important in the forest industry. The main planning is made in an annual resource plan which is continuously revised. The harvesting operations are divided into harvesting and forwarding. The harvesting operation fells trees and put them in piles in the harvest areas. The forwarding operation collects piles and moves them to storage locations adjacent to forest roads. These operations are done by machines (harvesters, forwarders and harwarders) and these are operated by crews living in cities/villages which are within some maximum distance from the harvest areas. Machines, harvest teams and harvest areas have different characteristic and properties and it is difficult to come up with the best possible match throughout the year. The aim with the planning is to come up with a cost efficient plan The total cost is based on three parts; production cost, traveling cost and moving cost. The production cost is the cost for the harvesting and the forwarding. The traveling cost is the cost for driving back and forward (daily) to the harvest area from the home base. Moving cost is associated with moving the machines and equipment between harvest areas. The Forest Research Institute of Sweden has together with a number of Swedish forest companies developed a decision support platform for the planning. An important aspect is to come up with high quality plans within short computational time. A central part is an optimization model which integrates assignment of machines to harvest areas and scheduling of the harvest areas during the year for each machine. The problem is complex and we propose a two phase solution method where we first solve the assignment problem and in a second stage the scheduling. In order be able to control the scheduling also in phase 1, we have introduced an extra cost component which balances the geographical spread of the assignments in phase 1. We have tested the solution approach on a case study from one of the larger Swedish forest companies. This case study involves 46 machines and 968 harvest areas representing a log volume of 1,33 million cubic meters. We describe some numerical results and experiences from the development and tests.