News archive for Department of Biological Sciences (BIO)

Traversing European Coastlines (TREC) is a continent-wide expedition addressing environmental challenges along the coasts of Europe. On their northernmost stop, the team was based at the Espegrend Marine Biological Station, hosted by the University of Bergen.

Members of the Michael Sars Centre had the exclusive opportunity to visit the research vessel Tara on Friday while the schooner was in Bergen for samples, supplies, and fuel. Afterwards, Tara researchers visited the Centre for a reciprocal tour of our marine facilities.

A new paper by the UNESCO Chair group looks back at half a century of experiences in The World Network of Biosphere Reserves (WNBR), of UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere Programme. The paper helps distil key learnings emerging from the implementation of WNBR and how these could accelerate our learning for sustainability worldwide. Led by Alicia Barraclough, it was written through a collaboration... Read more

On June 1st Nordhordland UNESCO Biosphere Reserve arranged their first ever Biosphere Day together with the UNESCO Chair Group at UiB. There was a programme from noon to evening, full of content about ongoing and concluded research in the area, in addition to interesting themes on sustainability relevant to the region.

The Plastics Network (UIB) has launched a plastic lunch seminar series to promote sharing of knowledge on plastics from different scientific perspectives.

The Norwegian World Heritage Forum 2023 is being held in Bergen on May 3-5. In connection to this, UNESCO Chair Inger Måren was recently interviewed about her work with Biosphere Reserves. Dr. Måren will also be giving a talk on her experiences with research in, with and for UNESCO Biosphere Reserves at the World Forum on May 5.

Deep seabed mining is coming closer to a reality, presumably motivated by the need for rare metals. In this lecture Lisa A. Levin, from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, will highlight the deep-sea ecosystems being targeted for seabed mining, their biodiversity and why it matters, potential threats and management challenges.

After dedicating most of the last six months of the project to conducting interviews, the CULTIVATE project partners finally met in person, this time on the Hiiumaa island in the West Estonian Archipelago – almost exactly a year since the first in-person meeting in Trebon in March 2022.