Fram Centre

Dsolve: working to prevent plastic litter in the marine environment

Plastic waste is high on the environmental agenda. Unfortunately, much of the marine litter in Norwegian waters originates from the fishing and aquaculture industries. Researchers are now working with these and other industries to find ways to eliminate or reduce the problems plastics cause.
March 23, 2022

Initiation of environmental science cooperation between Norway and Russia in 1992

Retrospective: Norway’s relationship with its superpower neighbour to the east has often been tense. In this article, Salve Dahle and co-authors give an eyewitness account of the time just after the fall of the Soviet Union, when cross-border tensions began to ease.
March 18, 2022

Research in the Arctic, for those who live here

The Fram Centre launches five new research programs with a total budget of 250 million NOK over five years.
February 14, 2022

Fjord ice in Svalbard—an important kindergarten for seafloor animal babies

Ringed seals and polar bears are not the only Arctic organisms that depend on sea ice. Thousands of microscopic plants and animals also utilise sea ice, but they are poorly known and rarely described to the public. Recent findings suggest that sea ice is an important nursery ground for many of them.
October 18, 2021

What does the arctic fox eat?

In 2018 an arctic fox captured in a trap had a fishing net around its neck. In 2019 a picture was taken of arctic fox scat with a lot of brightly coloured pieces of plastic in it. These events persuaded us to investigate if ingestion of human litter is a problem for the arctic fox population.
June 23, 2021

Rockslides in the Arctic: Why do we care?

Global climate warming is most severe in the Arctic. One consequence is a widespread reduction in permafrost. Continuous, stable permafrost can act as a physical glue that helps anchor unstable slopes. Increasingly, scientists are reporting collapse of rock slopes in the High Arctic.
June 14, 2021

Seabirds ring the alarm

Changes in seabird breeding productivity reflect hemispheric differences in ocean warming and human use, and call out the need for policies that reduce the impacts of climate change on the world’s marine ecosystems.
June 07, 2021

Norwegian Environmental Specimen Bank helps us understand chemicals’ history

The Norwegian Environmental Specimen Bank, established in 2012, contains frozen samples of animals, plants, air, and mud from mainland Norway and Svalbard. These samples are time capsules, preserving the present environmental state for future analysis, and providing regulators with an important tool.
May 19, 2021

Salmon farming in the North: How do we regulate growth?

Aquaculture has become a major part of global food production, and according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, it is now the fastest-growing animal food-producing industry. In the North, further growth in salmon farming is expected. What mechanisms are in place to regulate this growth?
May 06, 2021

Hunting for plastic: new digital technology to find and map marine litter

When plastic first arrived on the scene, it was welcomed as a benefit for humanity. Fascinated, the French philosopher Roland Barthes envisioned “a plasticised world” in his book Mythologies (1957). Now Barthes’ vision has become reality, for better and worse, and enthusiasm for plastic has dwindled.
April 26, 2021

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