A short-cut to new knowledge – The Nansen Legacy fact sheets

The 2-page fact sheets have been made to communicate important characteristics and new results on the Barents Sea region. As part of the synthesizing work in the large and interdisciplinary The Nansen Legacy project, the researchers have combined important results across disciplines from their many scientific papers. The key messages are complemented with beautiful and informative illustrations made by our science illustrator.

The topics of the ten fact sheets are shown as bold text below, and a few more fact sheets are in progress.

The Nansen Legacy project has investigated the Barents Sea system with focus on both the physical environment represented by Atlantic Water Inflow and the Sea ice in the Barents Sea. Arctic weather prediction illustrates how knowledge of sea ice, snow and open ocean improves weather forecasts. The living Barents Sea is included in many of the fact sheets, but the one on Biodiversity addresses in particular the many organisms found in sea ice, the open water and on the sea floor. Examples on human impact on the Barents Sea system is illustrated with the example of Ocean acidification that is resulting from the increased CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, contaminants like Mercury and how it accumulates in the organisms through the food web, and the challenge linked to Multiple stressors that organisms in the Arctic marine ecosystem presently experience. The future Barents Sea outlines the future environmental conditions and ecosystem and illustrates how our decisions today on carbon emission levels are too late to impact the 2050 Barents Sea, but have major implications for the Barents Sea 2100. Finally, information on the entire project The Nansen Legacy and the important topic of Data management that ensures accessible and reusable data are presented in the condenses way of fact sheets. 

All the fact sheets can be downloaded from here 

The responsible scientist and the team that have contributed to make the fact sheets are given at the bottom of page 2 on each fact sheet. Our science illustrator Frida Cnossen illustrated all the fact sheets.

Enjoy the reading!