Seapop

SEAPOP (Seabird Population Management) is a new broad-ranging, seabird monitoring initiative that became established in 2005. The programme covers the Norwegian mainland, Svalbard and adjacent sea areas and will provide base-line knowledge of seabird demographies, densities and distribution patterns that will enhance management of the marine environment.

The data collected in the programme will be used to develop models of seabird distribution and population dynamics based on a variety of environmental parameters; co-variation across different sites and species will also be assessed.

Within the scheduled programme period (ten years), SEAPOP aims to map in detail the distribution of breeding, staging and wintering seabirds along all coastlines of Norway and the Svalbard Archipelago. For logistic and economic reasons, much of the highly dynamic distribution of seabirds at sea in the vast areas covered by the programme will be predicted using multi-disciplinary models.

The national monitoring of population trends that has been ongoing since the 1980s will be continued and extended with more sites and species within the SEAPOP framework. SEAPOP will also fund a number of more specialised, short-term studies of seabird ecology and habitat use, some of which will apply sophisticated methods for automatic data recording.

The programme is a collaborative effort between the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA), the Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI) and Tromsø University Museum.

It is financially assisted by the Ministry of Environment, the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy and the Norwegian Oil Industry Association.

Prosjektleder: Hallvard Strøm & Dr. Harald Steen

Eksterne lenker