General syllabus
Ecology
The research at the Department of Ecology and Environmental Science covers a wide range of subjects within the doctoral programmes Ecology, Environmental Science and Physical Geography. We have about thirty PhD students. A number of them come from countries around the world.
ImageTomas Utsi
We do work on everything from biogeochemical, hydrological and geomorphological processes to the evolution, chemical composition, behaviour, interaction and spread of various organisms. We also study the biodiversity of many different species groups and the effects of human intervention, the ways various nature types interact as well as landscape features from current and historical perspectives.
We use a broad spectrum of methods, such as mathematics models, laboratory and field experiments and long-term environmental monitoring. The scale varies from the molecular to the global. Our research is focused on the northern ecosystems but also touches upon ecosystems on other latitudes and questions of global importance.
We want to understand how ecosystems function without human intervention and how things like forestry, dams that regulate the flow of streams, pollution, overfishing, foreign organisms and ecological restoration have affected and will affect the biodiversity and function of ecosystems in mountains, forests, lakes, rivers and seas.
The effects of global climate change is an important research area, whether these effects are natural or man-made. Two major projects concerning the sea and restoration ecology have climate change as the overall theme. The activities at the Abisko research station are also to a great extent aimed at changes in the climate.
Research is done within more or less organised research teams and in cooperation with many other researchers and institutions around the world. Our research on changes in ecosystems has been identified by the faculty as a particularly strong research environment.
Read more about the research in the Department of Ecology and Environmental Science
Global warming, acidification recovery and changes in land use caused warming and browning of northern lakes.
Maria Myrstener shows that this has the potential to decrease primary productivity of these ecosystems.
Johan's thesis shows that pharmaceuticals can be surprisingly persistent in northern environments.
