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.
2019
Abstract
No abstract has been registered
Abstract
Citizen science is sometimes described as "public participation in scientific research," or participatory monitoring. Such initiatives help to bring research into, for example, the classroom and engage pupils in well-structured observations of nature in their vicinity. The learning and practising of observation may increase the understanding of complex conditions occurring in nature, related to biology, ecology, ecosystems functioning, physics, atmospheric chemistry etc. For school curricula and motivation of pupils, practical hands-on activities performed by school pupils themselves by using their own senses stimulate faster learning and cognition. For this, the EDU-ARCTIC project developed the monitoring system. All schools in Europe are invited to participate in a meteorological and phenological observation system in the schools’ surroundings, to report these observations on the web-portal and to have access to all the accumulated data. The schools and pupils become part of a larger citizen effort to gain a holistic understanding of global environmental issues. The students may learn to act as scientific eyes and ears in the field. No special equipment is needed. Reporting of observations should be made once a week in the monitoring system through the EDU–ARCTIC web-portal or the accompanying mobile app. A manual and a field guide on how to conduct observations and report are available through the web. Teachers may download reports containing gathered information and use them for a wide variety of subjects, including biology, chemistry, physics and mathematics. Meteorological parameters are reported as actual values: air temperature, cloud cover, precipitation, visibility reduction and wind force, in all 19 parameters. There are also reports on meteorological and hydrological phenomena, which occurred within the previous week: like lightning, extreme and other atmospheric phenomena, ice on lakes and rivers and snow cover, in all 23 parameters. The monitoring system also includes biological field observations of phenological phases of plants: birch, black adler, lilac, rowan, bilberry, rosebay willwherb and denadelion, in all 26 parameters. The occurrence of the first individual of five species of insects: bumblebee, mosquito, ant and 2 butterflies: common brimstone and European peacook, and the registration of the first appearance of the bird species: arctic tern, common cuckoo, white wagtail and crane. An app for the monitoring system has been developed in order to engage pupils more by making it more comprehensive to register the meteorology and the phenophases. Further, special webinars and Polarpedia (the project’s own online encyclopedia) entries are developed to strengthen the monitoring system. The EDU-ARCTIC monitoring system gathered more than 2000 reports from schools, with an average monthly number of more than 80 observations. They are freely available via the web-portal, but password access is needed in order to enter registrations and data.
Abstract
EDU-ARCTIC is an open-schooling project, funded by the EU for the years 2016-2019 and managed by scientists, nature educators and IT technicians. The main aim is to attract young people (13-20 years old) to the natural sciences. Further, to raise awareness of how everything in nature is connected, and that STEM education therefore in part must be interdisciplinary across normal school curricula. To achieve these goals, EDU-ARCTIC uses innovative online tools with open-access, combined with nature expeditions. Four main modules complement each other, but can also be used independently: 1) Webinars, where scientists conduct online lessons about their own field of expertise. The lessons comes as packages with worksheets and online games. The lessons brings youth close to scientists. They can ask questions what it means to work with science. It is also a valuable tool for teachers to brush up their STEM knowledge and get inspiration for their own teaching. 2) Polarpedia, which is an online encyclopaedia of scientific terms used in the webinars. The science is kept easy-to-grasp, with the aim to stimulate the pupils’ curiosity to look for more information. 3) Monitoring system, which uses citizen science and the project’s own app to record observations of meteorology and phenology. Observations are open for everybody to use in their own teachings. 4) Arctic Competitions, which is the module that has engaged the pupils the most. They submit their idea for a science project in late autumn, work with the project over the winter and present it in spring as an essay, a poster or a video. Teachers come up with innovative ways to fit this work into the normal curricula. A few lucky winners get to join scientists on expeditions to polar research stations. After 2.5 years, EDU-ARCTIC has engaged at least 1093 teachers from 58 countries. There is a language barrier for some teachers, and it is difficult to fit webinars into the school timetable. However, the challenges are minor compared to the interdisciplinary success of having teachers meet across countries and curricula. Here we illustrate this in detail by presenting a way of interdisciplinary teaching (“the beauty of poetry and maths”) developed by one of the teachers in the project, Mr. Francisco José Gómez Senent. Starting from a single poem published in Nature, it innovatively combines mathematics, literature, history and linguistic competence. The teacher originally used it to stimulate curiosity about the aesthetic criterion in science. Science is not only about facts! The approach can be generalized to cover a wide range of curricula, and different teachers can use it in a team effort across classes. Conclusion: The EDU-ARCTIC project has demonstrated that letting teachers meet across countries and teaching fields facilitates inspiring and innovative cross-overs in the normal school curricula. When teachers are inspired we believe it creates a happy teacher – happy teaching effect. keywords: interdisciplinary, natural science, open schooling, research, transdisciplinary.
Authors
Lone RossAbstract
No abstract has been registered
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No abstract has been registered
Authors
Elena Fernández-Miranda Marcos ViejoAbstract
No abstract has been registered
Authors
Ketil Stoknes Ewelina Wojciechowska Agnieszka Jasińska Ralph NobleAbstract
When using food and green waste composts as peat-free plant growing media, there is a challenge that nutrient immobilisation and high pH and salts content limit plant growth. The present study explored the use of spent mushroom compost (SMC) of Agaricus subrufescens in a sustainable plant growing system where only vermicompost from digested food waste and composted green wastes were used, even for the seedling stage. However, negative effects of high compost inclusion were offset by adding SMC. Significantly higher plant yield was obtained in several of the SMC amended treatments in four out of five lettuce experiments and in one tomato experiment. In addition, an experiment with cucumbers showed that nutrients were not available to the plant when the mushroom mycelium was actively growing, but became available if the mushroom mycelium had been inactivated first by pasteurisation. A significant effect from SMC was not observed under full fertigation. This study demonstrated that the addition of pasteurised Agaricus mycelium colonised compost can successfully offset negative effects from high pH and EC as well as limited nutrient supply (and nitrogen immobilisation) in peat-free, compost-based growing media.
Abstract
No abstract has been registered
Authors
Simona Caputo Maria Papale Carmen Rizzo Stefania Giannarelli Antonella Conte Federica Moscheo Marco Graziano Paul Eric Aspholm Massimo Onor Emilio De Domenico Stefano Miserocchi Luigi Michaud Maurizio Azzaro Angelina Lo GiudiceAbstract
Anthropogenic impact over the Pasvik River (Arctic Norway) is mainly caused by emissions from runoff from smelter and mine wastes, as well as by domestic sewage from the Russian, Norwegian, and Finnish settlements situated on its catchment area. In this study, sediment samples from sites within the Pasvik River area with different histories of metal input were analyzed for metal contamination and occurrence of metal-resistant bacteria in late spring and summer of 2014. The major differences in microbial and chemical parameters were mostly dependent on local inputs than seasonality. Higher concentrations of metals were generally detected in July rather than May, with inner stations that became particularly enriched in Cr, Ni, Cu, and Zn, but without significant differences. Bacterial resistance to metals, which resulted from viable counts on amended agar plates, was in the order Ni2+>Pb2+>Co2+>Zn2+>Cu2+>Cd2+>Hg2+, with higher values that were generally determined at inner stations. Among a total of 286 bacterial isolates (mainly achieved from Ni- and Pb-amended plates), the 7.2% showed multiresistance at increasing metal concentration (up to 10,000 ppm). Selected multiresistant isolates belonged to the genera Stenotrophomonas, Arthrobacter, and Serratia. Results highlighted that bacteria, rapidly responding to changing conditions, could be considered as true indicators of the harmful effect caused by contaminants on human health and environment and suggested their potential application in bioremediation processes of metal-polluted cold sites.
Abstract
This study aimed at identifying optimal sward conditions for successful establishment of red clover (Trifolium pratense L.) through sod-seeding two typical Norwegian grassland systems dominated by timothy (Phleum pratense L.) and perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne L.), respectively. A total of four sod-seeding trials were implemented, two in late summer (SUM) and two in spring (SPR), one for each sward type and time point for reseeding. The sward coverage status was the basis for threshold definition, and image analysis techniques were used for objective coverage estimation of living plants, dead material and bare soil. Plots with different coverage levels (0–100% of the soil covered by vegetation) were created by spraying a broad-spectrum herbicide (glyphosate) in a spot-wise pattern, mimicking common types of patchiness caused by stressful weather events, e.g., frost or mechanical damage from wheels or hoofs. Seed germination and emergence started similarly in all coverage ranges. However, as time progressed clover seedlings started to die at a coverage dependent rate, and at the final harvest red clover dry matter (RCDM) was the lowest on plots with the highest pre-seeding coverage level. Dose-response curves explained these relationships and allowed estimating the effective-coverage ( ECov80 ), being the initial sward coverage at which 80% of all established red clover plants contributed significantly to the total biomass. Above 2500 kg ha−1 RCDM were produced on timothy ( ECov80 : 15–50%) in SUM, while less than 1000 kg ha−1 RCDM were produced on ryegrass ( ECov80:±10% ), indicating better conditions for clover establishment in timothy compared with ryegrass. In SPR, an ECov80 : 10–15% allowed a good red clover estabishment in ryegrass at cut 3, while RCDM was important and significant in timothy even between ECov80 20 and 60%, at cut 2 and cut 3, respectively. These thresholds for sod-seeding mark the challenges to introduce red clover in dense swards and could be applicable for grassland renovation with other desirable legume and grasses species. Our findings represent particular soil and climatic characteristics of the study site, thus should be taken with caution. Due to the lack of experimentally and sytematically determined thresholds for reseeding, future studies could benefit from our experimental approach, as a base for more complex, multi-site and multi-seasonal investigations, and farmers could use these thresholds for decision making on successful grassland renovation, to avoid wasting seed resources and yield loses.