Members
Here you can find a list of all ARCTOS members and PhD students. In the drop-down menu you can either select the member status or the institution the member belongs to.
Siri Ofstad
PhD candidate
PhD project title:
Anthropogenic and Methane Induced Ocean Acidification in the Fram Strait-Barents Sea Region – Effects on Modern Planktic Foraminifera.
Phd project description:
Methane seepage may be a potential source of ocean acidification, due to the aerobic oxidation of methane in the water column, which produces carbon dioxide as a byproduct. This means that methane seepage has the potential to alter water column carbonate chemistry. The shell density and dissolution of planktic foraminifera are believed to be controlled by the concentration of carbonate ions in the ambient seawater. Different methods have been used to evaluate the shell density of living planktic foraminifera and other calcifying organisms such as pteropods and benthic foraminifera. This project aims to investigate the carbonate chemistry and calcifying plankton at methane seepage sites.
Start date: Jan 2016
End date: Jan 2020
Supervisors:
Tine L. Rasmussen (UiT, Tromsø, Norway)
Kasia Zamelczyk (UiT, Tromsø, Norway)
Victoria Ollus
Master student
Master thesis title:
The distribution of seabirds in the Southern Ocean: abundance, density and variability in time and space.
Master thesis description:
Growing interest in the ecosystem services offered by the Antarctic ecosystem is demonstrated in the wish to expand krill fishery and in increasing tourism. These factors together with a changing climate pose new pressures on a pristine environment and its inhabitants. Distribution data on marine predators is necessary for conservation to be successful and crucial in establishing time and site-specific fishing quotas, where harvest levels are adjusted with respect to predator needs. Hurtigruten vessels MS Midnatsol and MS Fram were used as platforms of opportunity for collecting distribution data on marine mammals and seabirds around the West Antarctic Peninsula, in The Drake Passage and around the Falkland Islands and South Georgia in December 2019 and January 2020. In my master’s thesis, the data analysed will be limited to seabirds, and the goal is to estimate their abundance in time and space in the Scotia Sea. The distribution data will be related to different environmental variables to find the factors that describe the variation in seabird abundances and densities on a spatial as well as a temporal scale.
Start date: 03.12.2019
Planned submission date: 15.05.2021
Supervisors:
Ulf Lindstrøm (IMR, Tromsø, Norway)
Martin Biuw (IMR, Tromsø, Norway)
Andrew Lowther (NPI, Tromsø, Norway)