Environmental pollutants
Our environmental pollutants monitoring is included in the monitoring program MOSJ (Environmental monitoring of Svalbard and Jan Mayen).
The Norwegian Polar Institute is responsible for environmental pollutants monitoring in polar bears, Arctic fox, ringed seals, glaucous gulls, Brünnich’s guillemot and Harbour seals. The longest time series begins in the 1970s, while most species have been monitored since the early 1990s. Long-term monitoring of environmental pollutants adds knowledge about how emissions and climate-related changes affect levels of pollutants in arctic top predators.
Monitoring environmental pollutants
We also contribute to MOSJ with data on the composition of zooplankton in Kongsfjorden. The pelagic ecosystem in Kongsfjorden is affected by the influx of Atlantic and Arctic water, and our time series shows how changes in water masses affect the zooplankton community, which in turn affects higher trophic levels.