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.
2011
Abstract
No abstract has been registered
Abstract
Extensive landscape and vegetation changes are apparent within rural districts of Norway, especially as forest regrowth on abandoned agricultural land. Forest regrowth changes the landscape and vegetation heterogeneity, thus affecting management issues related to, for example, biodiversity and landscape aesthetics. By comparing up-to-date actual vegetation maps (AVMs), interpreted previous vegetation maps (IPVs), and potential natural vegetation maps (PNVs), we assess and quantify structural changes on a landscape level which are important for biological diversity and also the tourism industry. Our findings indicate that landscapes in rural districts of Norway have changed and that changes will continue in the future. The landscapediversity did not decrease from the 1970s until 2009. Further forest regrowth however, will lead to reduced landscape heterogeneity, while landscape connectivity will increase.
Abstract
Long-term monitoring of headwater semi-natural catchments is used to document persistence and changes in ecosystems. At three headwater catchments in the Bramke basin in Northern Germany, physical and chemical variables in rainfall, soil solution from various depths (20–300 cm) and streamwater have been monitored. The Lange Bramke catchment is largely covered by a Norway spruce (Picea abies, Karst.) stand planted in the 1950ies. Over 29 years, 4310 water samples from streamwater and 5475 soil water samples were analysed for major constituents. Both linear methods (principal component analysis (PCA) and cross correlation (CC)) as well as non-linear methods (isometric feature mapping (ISOMAP) and maximum variance unfolding (MVU)) were used to analyze the spatiotemporal patterns of dissolved major ion concentrations in soil solution and streamwater. This approach provides a multiscale characterisation of links between soil water and streamwater at the catchment scale. Pattern identification augments the interpretation of processes in terms of transport and storage. The long time scales were dominated by trends in ions implicated in soil acidification. This reflects the decreasing input of acid deposition. At the annual scale, where hydrological effects dominate, each of the three adjacent catchments showed different patterns. Various empirical and process-based models have been applied in the past to the Bramke catchments. Results of the data-oriented approach can be used to indicate the potential and limits of process-oriented models for this data set.
Abstract
No abstract has been registered
Abstract
Remote sensing of the activity of vegetation in relation to environmental conditions provides an invaluable basis for investigating the spatiotemporal dynamics and patterns of variability for ecosystem processes. We investigate the fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (fAPAR) using SeaWiFS satellite observations from 1998 to 2005 and ancillary meteorological variables from the CRU-PIK dataset with a global coverage at a spatial resolution of 0.5o x 0.5o. A pixel-by-pixel spectral decomposition using Singular System Analysis leads to a global “classification” of the terrestrial biosphere according to prevalent time-scale dependent dynamics of fAPAR and its relation to meteorology. A complexity analysis and a combined subsignal extraction and dimensionality reduction reveals a series of dominant geographical gradients, separately for different time scales. At the annual scale, which explains around 50% of the fAPAR variability as a global average, patterns largely resemble the biomes of the world as mapped by biogeographical methods, and are driven by temperature and by pronounced rain seasons in the tropics. On shorter time scales, fAPAR fluctuations are exclusively driven by water supply, inducing, e.g., semiannual cycles in the equatorial belt of Africa or the Indo-Gangetic Plain. For some regions however, in particular South America, altitude, mean temperature, drought probability and fire occurrences are parameters that seem to shape the spatial patterns of fAPAR across time scales. Overall, we provide a first global multiscale characterization of fAPAR and highlight different mechanisms in land-surface-climate couplings.
Authors
Sverre KobroAbstract
No abstract has been registered
Authors
Espen Govasmark Jessica Stäb Børge Holen Douwe Hoornstra Tommy Nesbakk Mirja Salkinoja-SalonenAbstract
No abstract has been registered
Abstract
No abstract has been registered
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This ESEE 2011 conference paper examines attitudes to private and public goods and bads from agriculture in Norway with a particular focus on organic agriculture. The issue is based on a survey among 939 Norwegians. The results show that the respondents strongly value public attributes of agriculture like a vivid countryside and cultural landscapes. Almost 60 percent of the sample emphasise that the government should aim to increase the production and sale of organic food. Respondents’ behaviour as consumers were investigated by collecting and analysing data that indicate which conditions respondents find most important when they buy milk, eggs, carrots and ketchup. Important conditions were taste, fresh, produced in Norway and no use of pesticides or fertilizers. The most important reasons for buying organic food were avoidance of pesticides, health and environmental concerns.
Abstract
Along the succession gradient of the boreal forest ecosystem, black grouse Tetrao tetrix inhabits the early and capercaillie Tetrao urogallus the latest stages. When converting old forest to clearcuts and plantations, commercial forestry has therefore been assumed to affect capercaillie negatively and to be favourable to black grouse. During a 30-year period (1979–2008) we monitored sympatric populations of the two species in a forest in southeast Norway based on annual spring and autumn censuses and radio-marked birds. During this period, the proportion of old, semi-natural forest was halved and clearcuts and young plantations increased accordingly. The grouse populations did not change as predicted. While the trend in August numbers of adult black grouse declined, males more than females, abundance of adult capercaillie remained unchanged. Number of males at leks showed similar patterns. Equally surprising, breeding success (number of chicks per female in August) of both species increased, thus indicating that the populations were regulated more by variation in adult survivorship than by recruitment of young birds. No correlations were found with changing climatic factors (precipitation and temperatures in winter and spring, snow depth and time of snow melt), except that year-to-year breeding success was positively correlated with minimum temperatures during 2 weeks posthatch. The results are explained by a combination of more flexible habitat selection than previously assumed and a changing predator regime: In the early period, nearly all capercaillie leks were located in old, semi-natural forest, but as plantations grew older (>30 years), new leks were established there. Similarly, while young capercaillie broods used old semi-natural forest almost exclusively when the study started, they frequently used middle-aged plantations, especially those with a ground cover of bilberry Vaccinium myrtillus, when these became common in later years. The increasing breeding success could largely be explained by more females rearing chicks successfully, presumably due to a marked decline in the main nest predator, the red fox Vulpes vulpes. A practice of thinning of the old, semi-natural forest some years prior to final harvesting probably facilitated predation of black grouse by goshawks Accipiter gentilis. Contrary to many beliefs, our results indicate that both capercaillie and black grouse are quite tolerant to changes in forest management regimes. In our study, numerical and functional responses of predators (mainly red fox and goshawk) apparently played a more important role in regulating grouse numbers than habitat factors per se.