Potential sources of marine plastic from survey beaches in the Arctic and Northeast Atlantic

Plastic litter is accumulating on pristine northern European beaches, including the European Arctic, and questions remain about the exact origins and sources. Here we investigate plausible fishery and consumer-related sources of beach littering, using a combination of information from expert stakeholder discussions, litter observations and a quantitative tool - a drift model - for forecasting and backtracking likely pathways of pollution. The numerical experiments were co-designed together with practice experts. The drift model itself was forced by operational ocean current, wave and weather forecasts. The model results were compared to a database of marine litter on beaches, collected every year according to the standardized monitoring program of the Oslo/Paris Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic (OSPAR). By comparing the heterogeneous beach observations to the model simulations, we are able to highlight probable sources. Two types of plastic are considered in the simulations: floating plastic litter and submerged, buoyant microplastics. We find that the model simulations are plausible in terms of the potential sources and the observed plastic litter. Our analysis results in identifiable sources of plastic waste found on each beach, providing a basis for stakeholder actions.publishedVersio

Still Arctic? — The changing Barents Sea

The Barents Sea is one of the Polar regions where current climate and ecosystem change is most pronounced. Here we review the current state of knowledge of the physical, chemical and biological systems in the Barents Sea. Physical conditions in this area are characterized by large seasonal contrasts between partial sea-ice cover in winter and spring versus predominantly open water in summer and autumn. Observations over recent decades show that surface air and ocean temperatures have increased, sea-ice extent has decreased, ocean stratification has weakened, and water chemistry and ecosystem components have changed, the latter in a direction often described as “Atlantification” or “borealisation,” with a less “Arctic” appearance. Temporal and spatial changes in the Barents Sea have a wider relevance, both in the context of large-scale climatic (air, water mass and sea-ice) transport processes and in comparison to other Arctic regions. These observed changes also have socioeconomic consequences, including for fisheries and other human activities. While several of the ongoing changes are monitored and quantified, observation and knowledge gaps remain, especially for winter months when field observations and sample collections are still sparse. Knowledge of the interplay of physical and biogeochemical drivers and ecosystem responses, including complex feedback processes, needs further development.Still Arctic? — The changing Barents SeapublishedVersio

Gender, occupational gender segregation and sickness absence: Longitudinal evidence

Women have much higher sickness absence rates than men. One prominent hypothesis is that this is a result of gender segregation in the labour market and the differences in employment or working conditions that follow from this. Previous studies assessing this idea give mixed results, but they do not take into account the possibility of selection effects. Longterm health differences between individuals may, for instance, influence both what jobs people end up in and their levels of sickness absence. In this paper, we provide new evidence on employment and working conditions as a cause of gender differences in sickness absence. We use individual fixed-effect models to account for selection based on stable individual characteristics. Like several previous studies, we find a U-shaped relationship with high absence in both male- and female-dominated occupations. However, the fixed-effect models show that this relationship is primarily caused by overrepresentation of absence-prone individuals in female-dominated occupations. Accounting for selection, the association between the proportion of women in the occupation and sickness absence is negative. As far as sickness absence is concerned, the gender segregation in the labour market thus seems to work to the advantage of women. © 2017 SAGE Publication

Occupational segregation and gender differences in sickness absence: Evidence from 17 European countries

Previous research indicates that women fare less well than men on a wide range of healthrelated measures, including sickness absence from work. Possible explanations are that women have—on average—less healthy jobs than men, or that they are more vulnerable to job-related stressors. We address these issues using comparative data on 17 European countries from the EU Labour Force Surveys. Employing logistic regression, we find that gender differences in sickness absence tend to increase if we control for up to 147 detailed occupational categories, thus indicating that women are, if anything, in more healthy jobs than men in most countries. We also examine to what extent the gender differences in sickness absence are systematically related to the gender mix of the occupation, e.g. whether women have particularly high sickness absence in occupations that are strongly male dominated. There is a tendency towards smaller gender differences in female-dominated occupations in a few countries, but in most cases the gender difference is of similar magnitude in female-dominated, male-dominated, and gender-balanced occupations. This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in European Sociological Review following peer review. The version of record is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcu05

Supplemental Material, Mastekaasa_Melsom_supplementary_files - Gender, occupational gender segregation and sickness absence: Longitudinal evidence

<p> Supplemental Material, Mastekaasa_Melsom_supplementary_files for Gender, occupational gender segregation and sickness absence: Longitudinal evidence by Anne May Melsom and Arne Mastekaasa in Acta Sociologica </p

Exploring drift simulations from ocean circulation experiments: Application to cod eggs and larval drift

Drift models are commonly used to study the transport of early life stages of fish and other marine organisms. Various approaches may be applied to examine the distribution and variability of ocean trajectory pathways. In the present study, we compare results using passive Eulerian tracers and Lagrangian float trajectories that are embedded in numerical models. We supplement this analysis by applying an offline model for drift computations. The contrasts in the results from the various configurations are mainly due to differences in drift depth. Simulations were performed using horizontal resolutions of 4 and 0.8 km. The higher-resolution experiment gives somewhat more realistic results for the drift time from Lofoten to the Tromsøflaket bank at the southwestern entrance of the Barents Sea. Furthermore, differences in results between simulation years are much larger than the differences that arise from the choice of model configuration. Climate variability at high latitudes on a multi-decadal time scale is dominated by large interannual variability superimposed on an underlying moderate warming trend. We conclude that a properly configured offline drift model using hourly or 2-hourly results from a simulation with a horizontal resolution of 1 km or finer is the best approach for investigations of trajectory pathways. The flexibility of an offline drift model is also highly advantageous in biological contexts, as it easily allows for a variety of ways in which behavioural characteristics can be parameterized, including descriptions that are defined after the ocean circulation simulation has been executed

Detection of the Fast Kelvin Wave Teleconnection Due to El Niño‐Southern Oscillation

Previous analyses of the ocean state along the western American coast have often indicated unexpectedly slow and limited propagation of coastally trapped Kelvin waves associated with the El Niño‐Southern Oscillation. In contrast, theoretical and numerical ocean models demonstrate that these Kelvin waves are a rapid and long‐range teleconnection between the low‐ and high‐latitude Pacific Ocean, strongly impacting both the surface coastal currents and nutrient upwelling. Sea level variations along the western coast of North America are reexamined under the assumption that tropically forced Kelvin waves are produced in bursts of several months duration. A cross‐correlation analysis, restricted to mid‐1982 to mid‐1983, is performed between Galapagos Island and stations along western Central and North America. A coastally trapped Kelvin wave is revealed to propagate at a speed of 2–3 m s−1 from the tropical Pacific to the Aleutian Island Chain. The observed phase speed agrees with the estimated speed of a Kelvin wave based on the average density profile of the ocean near the coast. Weaker El Niño events in 1986/1987 and 1991/1992 appear to contain a combination of this remote signal and local wind forcing. The wave propagation speed calculated from the spectral phase is shown to be sensitive to the presence of other (noise) processes in the observations. This is demonstrated through an analysis of a synthetic sea level data set that contains many of the essential features of the real sea level data. A relatively small level of red noise can give a 100% expected error in the estimated propagation speed. This suggests a new explanation for this important inconsistency within dynamical oceanography

Correction: Evaluation of a national operational salmon lice monitoring system-From physics to fish.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0201338.]

Combining hydrographical particles-tracking models with spatial analyses to evaluate spatial dynamics of cod larvae and 0-group in the Barents Sea

Recruitment ecology of cod has been an important focus within the framework of GLOBEC. A large part of this work focused on understanding the spatiotemporal component of cod populations. For the early pelagic life stages, studies based on an individual-based platform have provided highly valuable insights combining oceanographic, behavioural and modelling approaches. The spatial modelling of observational data often fails to include densitydependent covariates, which for early pelagic life stages, originate from the combination of circulation patterns and eggs coming from the spawning aggregations. We performed this task combining a hydrographical particle-tracking model with spatial statistical analyses to investigate the relative contribution of hydrographical variables on the spatial distribution of cod larvae in the Barents Sea under two short-term climatic regimes in the period 1986-1991. The cod larvae distribution is modelled using eggs drifting from the spawning aggregations in the Lofoten Islands. We found that inter-annual variability in the spatial aggregations of the spawners influenced the distribution of larvae drifted. We have also shown how the spatial distribution of passive-drifting larvae can change over the two regimes (1986-1988 and 1989- 1991), being more upstream in cold periods. Though the currents pattern is the main hydrographical factor shaping the spatial distribution of larvae, the temperature modifies such distribution by affecting larvae survival. However, our study highlights the geographic extension of the temperature effect changed between warm and cold periods, with clear ecological implications in terms of growth and survival. This approach can be useful for other fish populations to further understand the underlying processes shaping the seascape of early life stages. Keywords: Barents Sea cod, larvae, hydrographical particles-tracking models, spatial analyses