In this webinar, I will present the Svanhovd station to you in more detail, to inspire you to learn more about the importance of doing research so far north. I will tell a little about some of our 95 ongoing projects, and I will tell a little about how everyday life is up here. I want also to tell you how I make projects.

The research station NIBIO Svanhovd was established in 1936 as a testing and demonstration farm for agricultural development in subarctic areas by the ministry of Agriculture. Today the station is a part of NIBIO – the Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research. We are established on the border of Norway towards Russia. From our cantina windows, we see into Russia. The 21 persons employed at the station, work on various aspects of subarctic agriculture or nature management. The work on brown bears is an important part of our work that draws a lot of attention from schools, media and tourists. Our aim is mainly to understand how the populations of the bears develop, and how individual bears use the area. This is important to know in order to avoid problem bears, i.e. bears entering villages and towns to search for garbage, or predating on domestic reindeer. Other work that we do includes biodiversity, climate, pollution (we are monitoring, for example, radioactive downfall), and agricultural productions, especially how to re-establish the old and local types of vegetables that have better resistance. One of the overall goals in all our work is to understand benefits and drawbacks of how we use the ecosystem services around us, and also to find ecosystem services that we don’t know of yet.

Presenter: Paul Eric Aspholm