Policy brief: Adapting to heavy rainfall and flood risk, lessons learned from Møre and Romsdal

The brief summarizes key lessons learned from our three-year research project in Møre and Romsdal County. 

Link to the policy brief

We studied the impacts from flash floods on local communities, their risk perception, and adaptive capacities with a place attachment lens. If you are interested in our research paper on this topic check out: research paper

Our work was part of a wider Nordforsk project called CliCNord check out the website for more policy briefs on for example, Flooding in Denmark or storms managment in the Faroe Islands. 

CCA RG members’ present at CIIMAR’s Oceanus seminar series: An Arctic perspective on the changing Atlantic Ocean

On 14 February 2024, Dina Abdel-Fattah and Stian K. Kleiven from the CCA RG held a seminar at CIIMAR – the Interdisciplinary Centre of Marine and Environmental Research in Porto, Portugal, as part of CIIMAR’s weekly Oceanus seminar series.

Dina Abdel-Fattah and Stian K. Kleiven had a joint presentation during CIIMAR’s Oceanus seminar series. The Oceanus seminar series is a weekly seminar at CIIMAR on ocean-related research topics.

Abdel-Fattah and Kleiven were introduced by Irene Martins, a Principal Investigator at CIIMAR and the leader of CIIMAR’s Marine Ecosystem Modelling team.

Abdel-Fattah presented an outlook about the future of Northern Norway under climate change. She talked about how climate change is affecting ocean ecosystems in the Arctic. Northern Norway’s ocean ecosystems are one of the most vulnerable to climate change, due to the extensive aquaculture industry in the region that accounts for about 40% of the overall Norwegian fishing industry. She also presented some highlights from the CCA RG’s SSH Centre-funded EU Climate Policy book chapter. Notably, one of the main policy recommendations the book chapter proposes is how Maritime Spatial Planning can be used as a tool to bring scientific knowledge, stakeholders’ interests, as well as other critical socioeconomic information together to solve maritime-related planning and challenges.

Kleiven presented thereafter his PhD research. His PhD work is on the impact of biotic stressors, such as salmon lice, on farmed Atlantic salmon during different climate scenarios in Northern Norway. For example, potential sea surface temperature increases in Northern Norway can result in aquaculture industries experiencing an increased growth rate of Atlantic salmon, however, there can also be increased pressure on Atlantic salmon production from other organisms that flourish in warmer conditions, such as parasites, harmful algae blooms, jellyfish blooms, bacteria, and viruses.

Next week, Kleiven will take part in the CIIMAR-run course: Introduction to Ecological Modelling.

Stay tuned to learn more about that and other news from the CCA RG Erasmus+ mobility stay in Porto.

CCA RG members’ Erasmus+ research mobility exchange to Porto

This spring, two researchers from the CCA RG, Dina Abdel-Fattah and Stian K. Kleiven, are on a Erasmus+ mobility research exchange to CIIMAR – the Interdisciplinary Centre of Marine and Environmental Research in Porto, Portugal.

Dina Abdel-Fattah and Stian K. Kleiven, from the CCA RG are currently in Porto, to take part in an Erasmus+ mobility exchange to collaborate with researchers at CIIMAR. CIIMAR is a research centre at the University of Porto, which is another university part of the EUGLOH alliance. UiT holds the current presidency of the EUGLOH alliance this year.

Irene Isabel da Cruz Martins together with Fabiola Negreiros de Amorim from CIIMAR are the two main points of contact for Abdel-Fattah and Kleiven during their research stay in Porto. Both Abdel-Fattah and Kleiven will collaborate with Martins, Negreiros, and other researchers from CIIMAR on several different projects during their time in Porto.

One of the projects is the SSH Centre-funded book chapter project, which provides policy recommendations at the EU level for EU member states’ marine spatial planning initiatives. The work for the book chapter was started in 2023. The author team consists of: Dina Abdel-Fattah and Stian K. Kleiven from UiT, Misse Wester from Lund University, and Irene Martins and Sandra S. Ramos from CIIMAR.

Another project that the CCA RG researchers will collaborate on during their research stay in Porto is a coastal wetlands socioecological model development project for various coastal communities in Portugal.

Stay tuned for more news coming from Porto! Updates will be forthcoming about other projects, seminars, and courses from the mobility stay.

Dina Abdel-Fattah  –  Associate Professor

Stian K. Kleiven  –  PhD-fellow

Laurien de Korte  –  Assistant Professor

Leikny Bakke Lie  –  Doctoral Research Fellow

Christer Henrik Pursiainen  –  Professor of Societal Security

Bjarte Rød  –  Postdoctoral researcher