Contact: Jacob Nabe-Nielsen
Description of institute
The Department of Bioscience, Aarhus University (AU) is comprised of several research units. The research unit in Roskilde is responsible for research activities in arctic regions. This work encompasses research, monitoring and consultancy regarding environmental effects of raw materials activities, climate change and temporal and spatial trends of long-range transported contaminants. This includes adverse effects in marine top predators and human exposure. The unit has extensive expertise on population biology and modelling. It played an active role in the International Polar Year as the international coordinator of the IPY project “BearHealth” and retains some of the most extensive Arctic sample time series, including the longest and most substantive series so far (e.g. Hg in polar bear hair over 150 years and PFCs in polar bear tissues for 22 years). Similar time series will be produced for other OHCs during bear health together with information on biomarkers such as hormone and vitamin levels. Regarding spatial trends, trans-Arctic surveys for polar bear data show the highest concentrations in East Greenland bears in OHCs.
The Department of Bioscience has approximately 500 employees, and the arctic research unit comprises approximately 50 people.
CREAM project hosted by AU:
Viola Pavlova: Modelling effects of chemicals on polar bear population dynamics
