If you wish to meet with a seminar speaker during their visit, please contact Stephanie Boudreau to make an appointment.

The Centre for Marine Biodiversity is pleased to announce that Associate Professor Torleiv Brattegard of the University of Bergen, Norway will visit Atlantic Canada in late summer 2006. Dr. Brattegard will speak at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography. Please check again for more details. Dr. Brattegard is involved in teaching benthic marine fauna at the University Centre in Longyearbyen, Spitsbergen (see www.unis.no) at 78 degrees north, and he is also involved in the newly established Species Data Bank in Norway (see www.artsdatabanken.no but not translated to English). Dr. Brattegard has also been involved with the BioFAR and BioICE programs.

Wed. August 30th 2006 at 13:00
Bedford Institute of Oceanography (George Needler Boardroom)

Thurs. August 31st 2006 at 11:30
Dalhousie University (5th Floor Lounge, Life Science Centre)

----------------------------------------------
Can species composition and species distribution of marine benthic fauna be used as proxies for large-scale environmental change?

By

Associate Professor Torleiv Brattegard, Dr.Sci.h.c.
Department of Biology
University of Bergen
Norway

About fifteen years ago the Norwegian Directorate for Nature Management wanted to establish a list of possible marine protected areas along the Norwegian coast. A group of marine biologists was appointed to do the work. A biogeographical basis for selection of protected areas was needed. The group started compiling a catalogue of distribution tables for marine benthic macro-algae, free-living macro-invertebrates and demersal fishes recorded from the fjords, the coast and the inner shelf. The data used were based on more than 150 years of marine research including both published and unpublished records compiled and/or controlled by specialists. The first catalogue was published in
1997 and a second updated version appeared on www.dirnat.no in 2001. The catalogue is continuously updated by including recent data from research and monitoring acitivities as well as taxonomic changes. A searchable database will be available in near future. The problems encountered during this work will be discussed, and changes in species composition and species distributions will be discussed especially in light of the trend of increasing seawater temperature in Norwegian coastal waters.

Review the past seminars if you are interested in reading about whom has visited and what was presented.