FMC BioPolymer Haugesund. Undersøkelser av miljøeffekter fra utslipp til Karmsundet i tidsrommet 1990-2012

Hensikten med rapporten er å gi en samlet oversikt over utførte miljøundersøkelser og vurderinger omkring FMCs utslipp av tarerester, organisk stoff og næringssalter i Karmsundet i tidsrommet 1990-2012 og særlig utslippene av tungmetallene arsen, kadmium og krom. Avløpsvannet innlagres oftest i vannsøylen under overflata og gjennomgår rask og stor fortynning. Dette er årsaken til at det bare påvises lokal påvirkning fra utslippet. For Karmsundet som helhet utgjorde FMCs utslipp av organisk stoff (tarerester) 10-12 %, mens det helt dominerte i Vormedalsbukta der nedslammingen av bunnen er stor med tilsvarende effekter på benthos-samfunnet. Utenfor bukta dominerte tarerester fra den naturlige algeveksten. Virkningen av utslippet er her langt mindre og tarerestene utnyttes sannsynligvis som ressurs for økt produksjon av bunndyr og av fisk. Taren som bedriften bruker som råmateriale inneholder en del arsen, kadmium og krom, dette slippes ut i Karmsundet. Beregninger viser at fortynningen er så stor at det utenfor en avstand på 30-50 m kan forventes konsentrasjoner i vannkvalitetsklasse II og bedre. For kadmium og krom ligger alle målte konsentrasjoner i Karmsundet innenfor klasse II. Sedimenter i Karmsundet ser ut til å være relativt upåvirket av arsen. Blåskjell ser derimot ut til å ha noe forhøyede konsentrasjoner av arsen med konsentrasjoner opp i klasse III på enkelte stasjoner. Bedriftens avløpsvann inneholder formaldehyd som i høye konsentrasjoner kan skade marine organismer. Fortynningen er imidlertid så stor at utenfor en avstand på 25-50 m er der liten risiko for toksiske effekter. Bedriften har et relativt stort utslipp av næringssalter, men vannutskiftningen i Karmsundet fører til at utenom området umiddelbart utenfor utslippet var påvirkningen liten, dvs. vannkvaliteten tilsvarte klasse I-II. Tilsvarende gjaldt for planktonbiomassen målt som klorofyll: jevnt over tilstandsklasse I, men en moderat lokal påvirkning

Water Column Monitoring Research and development programme: Determining the residency of wild fish around offshore installations

Prosjektleder: Steven BrooksIn order to link effects with exposure, recent WCM programmes have discovered the need to determine the residency of fish, caught from within the safety zone of offshore installations. The method of using baited tags to encourage the voluntary ingestion of acoustic tags was thought promising and work was commissioned to develop the baited tag concept for field application. Acoustic telemetry products such as receivers and tag transmitters were obtained from the Norwegian electronics manufacturer Thelma Biotel AS. Developmental work, consisting of a series of cod feeding experiments in large aquaria at the NIVA marine research station in Solbergstrand, discovered some important findings including food preferences, residency time of the tag in the stomach of the fish and excretion pathways. A field trial was conducted in the Trondheimsfjord and although only one tag was eaten the quality of the data was promising for offshore application. The good quality images from the underwater camera with light fixed to the fishing line was also considered suitable for species determination and able to visually document the interactions of the baited tags with the fish. The offshore trial of the baited tag system at Ekofisk proved to be unsuccessful due to the unsuitability of the two fish species present at Ekofisk. It was thought the baited tag system would be more suitable in deeper waters with more voracious fish such as ling, tusk and larger haddock or cod. The baited tag system will be carefully considered for future water column monitoring campaigns.Offshore Norway, represented by EquinorpublishedVersio

Developing frameworks for studies on sedimentary fluxes and budgets in changing cold environments

Geomorphic processes that are responsible for the transfer of sediments and landform change are highly dependent on climate and vegetation cover. It is anticipated that climate change will have a major impact on the behaviour of Earth surface systems and that the most profound changes will occur in high-latitude and high-altitude cold environments. Collection, comparison and evaluation of data from a range of different high-latitude and high-altitude cold environments are required to permit greater understanding of sedimentary fluxes in cold environments. The focus of the I.A.G./A.I.G. SEDIBUD (Sediment Budgets in Cold Environments) Programme is the analysis of source-to-sink fluxes and sediment budgets in changing cold environments. Establishing contemporary sediment fluxes in a diversity of cold environments will form a baseline for modelling. At a minimum, baseline information from defined SEDIBUD test sites must consist of measures of mean annual precipitation, stream discharge, suspended load, conductivity/TDS and dominant catchment processes. Reports from ongoing studies on sedimentary fluxes and budgets in three selected study sites in Arctic Canada, sub-Arctic Iceland and sub-Arctic Norway are presented and discussed in the context of effects of climate change on process rates and sediment budgets in sensitive cold environments. Comparable datasets and coordinated data collection and data exchange will be of use for the individual studies at the different study sites. In addition, comparable data sets and data exchange will help to improve our understanding of existing relationships between contemporary climate and sedimentary fluxes and will enable larger-scale integrated investigations on effects of climate change in changing cold environments

Modeling Multi-Lane Traffic Flow with Queuing Effects

On the basis of assumptions about the behavior of driver-vehicle units concerning acceleration, deceleration, overtaking, and lane-changing maneuvers, a gas-kinetic traffic model for uni-directional multi-lane freeways is constructed. Queuing effects are explicitly taken into account in an overall manner. The resulting model is a generalization of Paveri-Fontana's Boltzmann-like traffic model and allows the derivation of macroscopic traffic equations for interacting lanes, including velocity equations. The related effective macroscopic traffic model for the total freeway cross-section is also derived. It provides corrections with respect to previous traffic models, but agrees with them in special cases.Comment: For related work see http://www.theo2.physik.uni-stuttgart.de/helbing.htm

Bodenzoologische Erhebungen auf Boden-Dauerbeobachtungsflächen: Welche Datengrundlage liefern sie für die Klimafolgen- und Klimaanpassungsforschung?

Für eine effektive Klimawirkungs- und Klimaanpassungsforschung ist es notwendig, Bodenveränderungen infolge des Klimawandels mit Hilfe eines Klimafolgen-Monitorings mit konkreten Daten zu dokumentieren. Welche Datengrundlagen aus bestehenden Instrumenten der Bodenzustandserhebung und des Bodenmonitorings dafür zur Verfügung stehen, wurde im Rahmen des UBA-Projekts „BOKLIM - Anwendung von Bodendaten in der Klimaforschung“ untersucht. Der hier vorgestellte Teil „Bodenzoologie“ ist auf die Boden-Dauerbeobachtungsprogramme fokussiert, weil nur dort bodenzoologische Daten im nennenswertem Umfang erhoben werden. Es wurden Datenbedarf, Datenangebot und das sich daraus ggf. ergebende Datendefizit geprüft. Die Analyse zeigt, dass die Boden-Dauerbeobachtung eine geeignete Basis für die bundesweite Erhebung bodenzoologischer Daten im Hinblick auf den Klimawandel bildet, jedoch auch erhebliche Defizite bestehen

Precision Flavour Physics with B→KννˉB\to K\nu\bar\nu and B→Kl+l−B\to Kl^+l^-

We show that a combined analysis of $B\to K\nu\bar\nu$ and $B\to Kl^+l^-$ allows for new physics tests practically free of form factor uncertainties. Residual theory errors are at the level of several percent. Our study underlines the excellent motivation for measuring these modes at a Super Flavour Factory.Comment: 26 pages, 2 figure