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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.

2018

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Abstract

Lunch canteens and their salad bars are an important arena for sales and consumption of vegetables including herbs. One major Norwegian canteen operator had a turnover of more than seven thousand tons of fresh vegetables in 2016, with lettuce, tomato, potato, cucumber and bell pepper being the most important species. A typical lunch meal included about 260 g vegetables including potatoes. Vegetables used in 450 canteens were either green, yellow, orange, red, purple/dark or colorless, and consisted of pigments of chlorophylls, carotenoids, anthocyanins and betalains. The total pigment content in the 60 most abundant vegetables was calculated to be 14.5-28.3 mg 100 g-1 FW. Of all vegetables in the canteens, 60% were found to be green. The intake of chlorophyll through one lunch meal was estimated to be 46 mg. Lettuce was found to be the single most important source of chlorophylls as this species was consumed in high amounts and made up 20% of the vegetables in a lunch meal. Carotenoids was found in all colored vegetables except the purple/dark ones and an estimate revealed an intake of 15 mg total carotenoids from lunch vegetables. Tomato was found to be the most important carotenoid source representing 44% of the total intake. Due to high pigment concentrations and popularity of red beets in the salad bars, the intake of betalains through a lunch meal was estimated to be 3 mg, similar to the total intake of anthocyanins from vegetable species.

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Abstract

Management of agricultural diffuse pollution to water remains a challenge and is influenced by the complex interactions of rainfall-runoff pathways, soil and nutrient management, agricultural landscape heterogeneity and biogeochemical cycling in receiving water bodies. Amplified cycles of weather can also influence nutrient loss to water although they are less considered in policy reviews. Here, we present the development of climate-chemical indicators of diffuse pollution in highly monitored catchments in Western Europe. Specifically, we investigated the influences and relationships between weather processes amplified by the North Atlantic Oscillation during a sharp upward trend (2010– 2016) and the patterns of diffuse nitrate and phosphorus pollution in rivers. On an annual scale, we found correlations between local catchment-scale nutrient concentrations in rivers and the influence of larger, oceanic-scale climate patterns defined by the intensity of the North Atlantic Oscillation. These influences were catchment-specific showing positive, negative or no correlation according to a typology. Upward trends in these decadal oscillations may override positive benefits of local management in some years or indicate greater benefits in other years. Developing integrated climatechemical indicators into catchment monitoring indicators will provide a new and important contribution to water quality management objectives.

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Abstract

In cold climate regions a significant fraction of annual soil erosion in agricultural land occurs during snowmelt and rain on partially frozen soils. Physically based and spatially distributed soil erosion models have proved to be good tools for understanding the processes occurring at catchment scale during rainfall erosion. However, most existing erosion models do not account for snow in a suitable way. A combination of the UEBGrid snow pack model and the LISEM erosion model was therefore used in this study. The aim was to test and validate this model combination and to assess its utility in relation to quantification and process understanding. Applying this model combination to simulate surface runoff and soil erosion showed that, in principle, it is possible to satisfactorily simulate surface runoff and observed soil erosion patterns during winter. The values for the calibration parameters were similar for the two chosen winter periods when the rainfall and snowmelt episodes occurred. However, the calibration procedure showed that the utility of this combination had several limitations. It is hoped that this study can help to improve existing models and trigger new developments in including snow pack dynamics and soil freezing and thawing in soil erosion models.