Ålandsbanken, a finnish bank, has funded and supported different projects aiming for a healthier Baltic Sea for some years. This year 126 applications were submitted to the competition called The Baltic Sea Project. Twelve projects were chosen by the judges to proceed to the next stage, public voting. The winner of the voting is guaranteed the funding but usually several of the finalists will get funded.
Tvärminne Zoological Station took part to the competition together with DROPP with an innovative project from which you can read more below. Take a closer look at this and other competing projects and cast your vote today!
The university teachers of several finnish universities will gather together in the Lammi Biological Station next week (13-15.12.). The BIOPEDA II -workshop & seminar continues the work which started last March in Konnevesi Biological Station. The agenda is to develope the co-operation of the different universities and field stations in the context of teaching biology and related subjects on the field.
The co-operation is seen as a possibility to enhance the quality of teaching, serving the common goals of the academia. Teaching on the field is partly reinforced with the scaffolding use of digital resources. One step in order to reach the goals has been the launch of the internet-portal maasto-opetus.fi. This site will be developed further during the workshop in Lammi. The principal targets of this portal are to offer information to both students and teachers, act as a tool to interact and offer tools for better teaching. For example, the portal will offer ready made instructions how to set up different experiments on courses; the teacher can use these instructions as such, or make minor adjustments according to local conditions.
The schedule and invitation letter (in finnish) is attached. More information from tiina.kolari AT uef.fi.
Welcome to LBS.
[EDIT 19.12.]
The two day workshop at LBS was successful in creating a lot of content to the web site. The mission of the project was also elucidated.
Our mission is to increase the cooperation between teachers and sharing of teaching resources within the Finnish university research network. This will aid both to reduce costs and improve the diversity and quality of courses offered to students, thus increasing the expertise and know-how available in Finland. The university fieldwork website has been created as part of the Kone Foundation funded BIOPEDA project.
The internet portal is still being developed; the material will be edited and uploaded there in the near future. Everyone interested writing new field course works are encouraged. Blank forms for submitting new works will be available soon, until then do not hesitate to contact the project through info AT maasto-opetus.fi. When the portal is ready different language versions will also be launched.
The portal will also provide a channel to share info and / or memories from field courses held. The blog will be updated with regular intervals, but if you want to share something please do so! The blog posts will be published also in our Facebook page.
Stay tuned also for the publication written after the first seminar in Konnevesi, it will be published soon in the Journal ofUniversity Pedagogy.
Biopeda workshop attendants at Lammi biological Station.
Luminous Finland Saana 4.- 5.12.2017 is a light art event that will be held in honour of the 100th anniversary of Finland’s independence in Kilpisjärvi. Kilpisjärvi’s landmark – the fell Saana – will receive a unique cover of light over its slopes to celebrate the Finnish jubilee year. The unique light art work “Luminous Saana” is part of the Luminous Finland 100 project, which is being implemented and produced by Valoparta Oy and light artist Kari Kola. The lighting up of Saana will begin on 4.12. in the polar light and the lights will go out at midnight on 5.12. The fell will be lit up in celebratory fashion for more than 30 hours.
During the light art event of Saana the Kilpisjärvi Biological Station will organize several events. The mouse museum at Kiekula is open on both days and you are very welcome to the cafeteria at the research station.
More information and the schedule of the event can be found here. We will add here some photos and info after the event.
[EDIT 08.12.]
Lake Kilpisjärvi and Saana (photo: Elina Hutton).
The station’s sauna was heated up under a very nice lighting (photo: Elina Hutton).
The weather was favourable during the event. Picture from the tuesday afternoon (photo: Elina Hutton).
Old films about Kilpisjärvi shown at the Kilpisjärvi Biological Station (photo: Elina Hutton).
Esa Turunen from Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory (SGO) talking about northern lights and their research (photo: Elina Hutton).
Tvärminne Zoological Station arranges a doors open event September 16, at 11 am to 17 pm. Clearly, as the name suggests, the event is directed towards the greater public. For decades, the event has been arranged every 5 years, and this is true also in 2017. The timing and interval allow us to acknowledge every 5 year milestone of the station’s existence, and this year we celebrate the 115th anniversary.
Over the years, it has become clear that the station’s activities are highly interesting to our guests. In fact, each time, one of the most frequent comments is that we should welcome the public more often. As much as we would like to, we unfortunately have to point out that the doors open event ties the resources of personnel and scientists not only that day, but for weeks beforehand, when we make preparations.
Nevertheless, we of course welcome the demand! In fact, last time the demand was so great, that we had about 1 000 visitors! (Keeping in mind that Hanko has only ca 8 000 inhabitants, and the whole region roughly 50 000, this is quite remarkable – in the Helsinki region a similar demand would translate into tens of thousands of visitors!)
Tvärminne Zoological Station.
We can only guess why there is such a great interest in our activities. One thing would probably be that the topics we study are attractive. For instance, most people who live in a coastal town have some connection to the sea, and hence also are interested in the state of the coastal waters. Also, our research is frequently present in the media, and obviously people want to learn more. I guess our visitors also realize that there is great added value in learning hands on about our studies (from enthusiastic scientists), compared to more passive media content (who wouldn’t prefer to see a live flounder rather than just reading texts and looking at photographs?).
A further added value – which I am not sure the visitors would know beforehand – is the fact that by far not all of our study subjects are presented in media. Especially I would say this goes for basic (but high-level), curiosity driven science. Typically, such topics do not have a direct connection to, say human activity or applied environmental issues. Nevertheless, it is satisfying to see that also these topics are met with great curiosity also by our users, when presented by our motivated scientists. Specifically, I have noted that terrestrial and evolutionary topics get the exposure they deserve, although they are not typically head-line stuff in local media.
I may sound a bit defensive when I suggest that we cannot welcome great numbers of visitors more often. This of course does not take away our responsibility to interact with society in the meantime. And naturally we do! Media was already mentioned – we do not stand on our heads to be available, but it is not far away. Social media are a given. We also welcome large numbers of visitors in smaller groups annually.
Furuskär island just outside the station.
But can we get better? Sure we can. Quite recently, we have started to put more effort into online data – as pointed out the state of the sea is something that attracts a great interest. This goes hand in hand with both new technologies to collect data, and with an urge from society to make data open and accessible.
This does not come without challenge, however. Even if we can attract funds to buy new instruments, there are at least three additional bottlenecks. Firstly, the instrumentation requires know-how and manpower to be operated. Secondly, the data have to be validated and refined. (Nobody does anything with just a huge amount of numbers.) Thirdly, the output has to be presented in a comprehensive way, and preferably commented upon for interpretation.
Typically, public infrastructure funds have limited or no space for the human resources needed to tackle the above bottlenecks. Here, we have taken the approach that there are also private companies that share our interest in public outreach, albeit from a different standpoint. With regards to the sea, such operators would be shipping companies and harbors, and we have also been fortunate to initialize collaboration with two companies with the sea as the common nominator – namely Viking Line and Port of Hanko. In both companies, there is an understanding on not only the hardware-demand, but also on the bottlenecks that require human resources.
Openness have other sides than meeting demands from the outside. Lastly, therefore, I would like to point out that events such as the doors open also motivate us as researchers. It is nice to shift focus sometimes, and see that our undertakings also attract the interest from the world outside. Society, I think it is called.
Text: Marko Reinikainen, director of Tvärminne Zoological Station
In order to introduce mobile data gathering tools, a web browser based visualization service was set up for the stations a few months ago. The service is aimed for any visitor at any of the stations; people can use their mobile devices to record their own nature observations. The observations made are visualized on a map below (fig. 1) in real-time. The idea of this project, besides introducing the tools, is to provide meaningful doing for different groups visiting or staying at the research stations. So far observations have been made by staff, researchers, different courses and sudden visitors.
Fig. 1. The mobile nature observations visualized on a map. A green marker means a positive observation and a red marker means a negative observation.
We used Open Data Kit –tools for data gathering and Google’s services in visualizing the data. All the tools used work seamlessly hand in hand. All the necessary tools have been installed and are available at the stations. Mobile data gathering tools can be used for example both in research and teaching purposes.
Using mobile devices for data gathering has some advantages against traditional field forms. With digital mobile forms, all kinds of data can be gathered simultaneously with one device. Besides of numeric data it’s also possible to record co-ordinates, take photos, record sound etc. With ready-made digital forms and pre-formatted answers to choose from, errors in writing down the data can be minimized. One big advantage is also that the data is sent directly to the server (or a spreadsheet) from the field. The forms work also off-line, which is very important in field conditions, also in a technologically advanced country like Finland there are numerous areas with no mobile data connection available.
Contact Lammi Biological Station for more information on the tools available. The nature observation system is at your disposal if you visit any of the five HiLIFE-stations.
There are also co-operation between Lammi Biological Station and some teachers around Finland. The idea is to use the mobile observation tools in school projects and public science projects.
Research in the Behavioural Ecology Research Group (Monash University, Australia), led by Associate Professor Bob Wong, focuses on the evolution of animal mating systems and behaviour. We have, for instance, investigated the impacts of environmental change on animal behaviour and the evolutionary process, and how investment in sex influences reproductive strategies and biological diversity.
Members of the Group have had a long association with Tvärminne Zoological Station. In this respect, the Group has also been working in close collaboration with Prof. Kai Lindström (and others) for over a decade on sexual selection and parental care in fish. The work in Tvärminne has involved both field and laboratory-based research investigating the role of environmental factors (e.g. salinity, predation risk, competition, resource quality and density) on male and female mating behaviour. Our work has also included student research, with Australian-based students undertaking experiments on male parental care in sand gobies and sticklebacks.
In 2017, Bob Wong and Dr. Topi Lehtonen completed a field based experiment in Tvärminne, investigating the role of nesting resource quality and male-male competition on patterns of nest colonisation in male sand gobies. The research involved setting up artificial nesting resources (ceramic tiles) in shallow water near Vargskär Island and manipulating both the quality of the resource (large versus small tiles) and the extent of resource aggregation (i.e. a single nesting resource on its own, or two nesting resources in close proximity) and examining the attributes of the males that subsequently settle into those areas. The findings will contribute to our understanding of how resources and resource competition affect settlement patterns in the wild.
Artificial nesting resource (ceramic tile) in shallow water (photo: Topi Lehtonen).Dr. Topi Lehtonen and Associate Professor Bob Wong on a small boat doing a friedsie (photo: Topi Lehtonen).
Associate Professor Bob Wong, Monash University, Australia.
Only two decades ago, there seemed to exist just two silvicultural options in Finland, either commercial forestry or conservation. There was public debate over the adequacy of conserved forest area and the usefulness of the geographical locations of conserved areas. Improving the biodiversity of forests became a widely known concern at the turn of the century. After that, more and more alternative goals for forest management have become established hand in hand with increasing diversity of forest owners. Suddenly there seem to be as many options for forest management as there can be options to account for different societal needs.
The variety of competing interests and methods may make even the scientific debate appear more like politics. The use of wood for carbon economy provides an example: is it best to allow forests in Finland to capture as much carbon from the atmosphere as quickly as possible, or is it best to promote the replacement of fossil fuels with biofuels as soon as possible? Although both options are sensible and based on good arguments, predicting the end result of either is highly complex depending on the time perspective and on the multiple connections among interacting ecological and societal processes.
Forestry courses at Hyytiälä station serve to teach silvicultural decisions through actual field examples. A look at the former and present course programs shows how the alternatives of forest management have appeared in the teaching agenda. Just ten years ago the division was simple “Differences between natural and commercial forests”, and the management methods included basic routines such as soil preparation, choice of proper tree species, seeding or planting practices, thinning procedures and cutting. Game management, a dear hobby for many traditional forest owners, was included as the sole added aspect.
Nowadays even the basic courses cover a much wider choice of management alternatives. As explicated in the course topics, people can have multiple values and objectives, and it is rational to emphasize different aspects in different decisions: landscape management, household needs, economical security, recreation, and generally the presence of multiple criteria for forest management, including various ecosystem services that can be promoted through proper nature management. The recommendations of WWF become covered as well.
Forest sciences have good chances to be an active member in the current rise of Finnish forestry sector. The modern teaching of forest sciences has great potential for producing highly skilled experts of ecological engineering who can consider the invaluable role of forests for functioning of both biosphere and human economy. Despite the unavoidable complexity of balancing different goals, a student with proper values and insight – and hopefully accompanied with support from the society – has good possibilities to learn just the right tools to successfully tackle these challenges.
Text and photos: Dr Pekka Kaitaniemi, research coordinator, adj. prof. at Hyytiälä Forestry Field Station
Summer is coming and we are on our way to sample some Crustaceans (photo: Niko Nappu 2017).
Summer is coming and field activities are increasing at the research stations. In the north there is still a thick cover of snow, but in the south of Finland the students from different faculties and departments are all around, busy with their teachers. Research groups are installing their equipment and starting to execute their fine plans outdoors. The interns have plenty of things on their hands, helping in the research or doing their own research projects.
Wish me good luck and a large sample of crabs (photo: Niko Nappu 2017).Northern lapwing (Vanellus vanellus) nests can be tracked with a thermal camera and a drone (photo: Niko Nappu 2017).
The University of Helsinki research stations offer excellent logistics and support for research and teaching. With their long history the stations are able to provide long term environmental background data sets from the Baltic Sea to the north of Finland. The stations have modern infrastructure to support a wide variety of research, from field studies to laboratory analyses. Accommodation and catering services make the stay at the stations easy and comfortable.
This blog is all about the happenings at the University of Helsinki research stations. The stations belong to the RESTAT-station network along with the other Universities’ field stations. Five of the stations form also a HiLIFE-network (Helsinki Institute of Life Sciences) for co-operation. You are welcome to follow the activities of Tvärminne Zoological Station, Lammi Biological Station, Hyytiälä Forestry Field Station, Kilpisjärvi Biological Station and Muddusjärvi Research Station in this blog.
A common www-page is also under construction for the stations. When it is ready you good people will be informed here. Have an interesting summer and do not forget to visit here now and then!
The University of Helsinki research station network provides excellent framework for conducting research and teaching. This blog provides insight into the five HiLIFE-stations, ranging from the Baltic Sea to the north of Finland. Stay tuned for news and do not forget to visit also
