On Tuesday 11 December Lovisa Lind Eirell, Assistant Professor at Karlstad University, will give a seminar titled “The story of the seed – establishment and dispersal among different process domains”. The seminar will be held at 13.15 in room 5F416 at Karlstad University. Everyone who wants to are welcome to attend the seminar.
River Rottnan in winter
Johan Watz, Olle Calles, Niclas Carlsson, Teemu Collin, Ari Huusko, Jörgen Johnsson, Anders Nilsson, Johnny Norrgård and Daniel Nyqvist recently published the paper “Wood addition in the hatchery and river environments affects post-release performance of overwintering brown trout” in the journal Freshwater Biology.
In the abstract, the authors write:
“1. Habitat structural complexity affects the behaviour and physiology of individuals, and responses to the environment can be immediate or influence performance later in life through delayed effects.
2. Here, we investigated how structural enrichment, both pre-release in the hatchery rearing environment and post-release in the wild, influenced winter growth and site fidelity of brown trout stocked into side channels of a regulated river.
3. Experiencing structural enrichment in the rearing environment during 3 months in autumn had no pre-release effect on growth, but a delayed positive effect after release during the subsequent winter. Moreover, trout recaptured in wood-treated sections of the side channels had grown more than trout recaptured in control sections. Wood enrichment in the side channels also increased overwinter site fidelity.
Johan Watz at the field site.
4. These results show that adding structure during a relatively short period may alter growth trajectories, and adding wood to side channels is a cost-effective method to enhance winter habitat carrying capacity for juvenile salmonids in regulated rivers.”
Access the paper here.
Teemu Collin tracking trout at the field site.
Dead wood in a side channel of the river.
River Rottnan.
On Tuesday 13 November Denis Lafage, Postdoc at Karlstad University, will give a seminar titled ” Drivers of aquatic to terrestrial exchanges in riparian ecosystems: a worldwide approach using stable isotopes”. The seminar will be held in room 5F416 at 13:15. Everyone who wants to are welcome to attend the seminar.
Haydn Washington, Guillaume Chapron, Helen Kopnina, Patrick Curry, Joe Gray and John Piccolo recently published the paper “Foregrounding ecojustice in conservation” in the journal Biological Conservation.
In the abstract of the paper, the authors write:
“Justice for nature remains a confused term. In recent decades justice has predominantly been limited to humanity, with a strong focus on social justice, and its spin-off – environmental justice for people. We first examine the formal rationale for ecocentrism and ecological ethics, as this underpins attitudes towards justice for nature, and show how justice for nature has been affected by concerns about dualisms and by strong anthropocentric bias. We next consider the traditional meaning of social justice, alongside the recent move by some scholars to push justice for nature into social justice, effectively weakening any move to place ecojustice centre-stage. This, we argue, is both unethical and doomed to failure as a strategy to protect life on Earth. The dominant meaning of ‘environmental justice’ – in essence, justice for humans in regard to environmental issues – is also explored. We next discuss what ecological justice (ecojustice) is, and how academia has ignored it for many decades. The charge of ecojustice being ‘antihuman’ is refuted. We argue that distributive justice can also apply to nature, including an ethic of bio-proportionality, and also consider how to reconcile social justice and ecojustice, arguing that ecojustice must now be foregrounded to ensure effective conservation. After suggesting a ‘Framework for implementing ecojustice’ for conservation practitioners, we conclude by urging academia to foreground ecojustice.”
You can access the full paper here.
On Tuesday October 30, Peter Hambäck, Professor at Stockholm University, will give a seminar at Karlstad University titled “Spatial subsidies for shore-line spiders: evidence from molecular gut content analysis and stable isotopes”. The seminar will start at 13:15 in room 5F416, everyone who wants to are welcome to attend the seminar.
Daniel Nyqvist, Jonas Elghagen, Marius Heiss and Olle Calles recently published the article “An angled rack with a bypass and a nature-like fishway pass Atlantic salmon smolts downstream at a hydropower dam” in the journal Marine and Freshwater Research.
In the abstract, the authors write:
Hydropower dams disrupt longitudinal connectivity and cause fragmentation of river systems, which has led to declines in migratory fish species. Atlantic salmon smolts rely on intact longitudinal connectivity to move downstream from rearing habitats in freshwater to feeding grounds at sea. Smolts often suffer increased mortality and delays when they encounter hydropower plants during their downstream migration. Currently, there are few examples of downstream passage solutions that allow safe and timely passage. We assessed the performance of two passage solutions at a hydropower dam, namely, an angled 15-mm rack with a bypass and a large nature-like fishway. The performance of these new fish passage solutions was evaluated by tracking radio-tagged Atlantic salmon smolts as they encountered the facilities. The radio-tagged smolts passed the dam 9.5 h after release (median) and exhibited a dam-passage efficiency of 84%, with passage rates increasing with body length. Fish passage occurred through both the rack bypass and the naturelike fishway. The passage efficiencies were 70–95% for the rack bypass and 47% for the nature-like fishway. The new fish passage facilities resulted in improved passage conditions at the site, confirming that angled racks with bypasses as best practise solutions for downstream passage, but also that large nature-like fishways may act as downstream passage routes for salmon.
Access the paper here, or contact any of the authors.
A Dolly Varden trout (Salvelinus malma).
On Tuesday 16 October, Johan Watz from Karlstad University will give a seminar titled: “Report from a postdoctoral research stay in Sapporo and results from a field experiment: Condition-specific competition between two Japanese charr species”. The seminar will start at 13:15 in room 5F416 at Karlstad University. Everyone who wants to are welcome to attend the seminar.
Amy Newsom on lake Alstern.
In August and September 2018, Amy Newsom from Germany visited Karlstad University and did an internship with NRRV. Here she writes about her months at Karlstad University.
“Having spent a year at Karlstad University as an exchange student in 2017 in the framework of my bachelor program “Environmental and Sustainability Studies” at the Leuphana University in Lüneburg, Germany, I had already been able to gain a first impression of the university’s biology department, which sparked my interest in freshwater ecology. Consequently, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to join the Naturresurs rinnande vatten Team for a six-week internship in August and September of 2018.
During the weeks I spent at Karlstad University, I was able to work with different researchers, getting to know a variety of projects and greatly extending my previous knowledge on freshwater and riparian ecology, in particular river connectivity. My main aim in this internship was to gain more practical research experience, so I was glad to be able to spend a lot of time both in the lab and in the field. For example, my work included processing raw data on the ventilation rates of young trout to assess differences in metabolism efficiency, counting the eggs of spiders gathered in the field and preparing samples for stable isotope analysis to assess the impact of hydro dams on food web interactions of fish. This was a particularly interesting experience as stable isotope analysis was a new scientific procedure to me, and I was keen to learn more about it. I was also excited to join in some of the field work conducted during my time at NRRV, collecting fish, invertebrates and plankton samples from the lake Alstern and electrofishing in the rivers Mörrumsån and Emån to assess the overall community composition at different sites. I was furthermore able to gain valuable insights into the design of research experiments while accompanying the setting up of an experimental flume in Älvkarleby and the preparation of eel traps in the river Alsterälven. In the time I spent in the office, I was also able to gather more experience in data analysis and scientific writing, both helpful preparations for my upcoming bachelor thesis.
Amy Newsom dissecting a crayfish.
Returning to Karlstad also gave me the opportunity to improve my Swedish, reconnect with old friends and make new contacts, as well as further explore the forests, rivers and lakes in the area that I have come to love so much. My thanks go out to John Piccolo, on whose invitation I was able join NRRV as an intern, the International Offices both in Karlstad and at my home university for helping me with the administrative process, and the German foundation Meifort Stiftung, whose generous support made this internship possible for me. I am also incredibly grateful to all the researchers at the KAU biology department who warmly welcomed me into their team, took the time to introduce me to their work and helped me gain new knowledge and experience, in particular Olle Calles, Rachel Bowes, Larry Greenberg, Denis Lafage, Karl Filipsson, Andrew Harbicht, Lovisa Lind and Niclas Carlsson.”
Amy Newsom and Andrew Harbicht (NRRV-postdoc) electrofishing in river Mörrumsån.
A cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarkii).
On Monday October 8, Guillermo Giannico, Associate Professor at Oregon State University, will give a seminar titled: “Fish Passage and Habitat Restoration: a Priority Setting Approach from Coastal Oregon, U.S.A”. The seminar will start at 13:30 in room 5F322 at Karlstad University. Everyone is welcome to attend the seminar.
A threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus), a fascinating animal likely to be mentioned in both talks.
On Tuesday October 9, two seminars will be held at the biology department at Karlstad University.
Adaptive potential and evolutionary responses to climate change: Arctic char and threespine stickleback in Greenland – Michael Hansen, Professor, Aarhus University
Ecological genetics – What’s it about and how can we use it? – Karl Filipsson, NRRV PhD-student, Karlstad University
The seminars will be held in room 5F416 and start at 13:15. Everyone who wants to are welcome to attend the seminars.
Google-translate … is a research group associated to the subject of Biology and the Department of Environmental and Life Sciences at Karlstad University, Sweden. The group conducts both basic and applied research on human impact on river ecosystems, and how this impact can be minimized.
NRRV is the Swedish abbreviation for naturresurs rinnande vatten, in English the group is called the River Ecology and Management research group (RivEM).
