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Ecotoxicology, Risk & Modelling

A main objective of our work is to provide input to environmental management and risk assessment for marine environments and to participate in the development of new tools.

We are creating new knowledge for establishment of environmental risk methods and model tools, and with our partners we contribute to the development of such model tools. This is related to the needs of regulators and operators of oil and gas activities offshore, but also to other maritime operations.

We also provide risk assessment services based on our environmental expertise and established tools.

The first step is to obtain knowledge and data.

Controlled laboratory experiments are a very important part of this: We are able to conduct all types of exposures, for shorter or longer periods (several months), with a variety of species and on early life stage as well as adult specimens. Click on Photo to enlarge.

Early life stage tests give some of the most direct indications regarding possible population effects. Therefore they are very important for assessment of ecological effects.
However, in the field it is not possible to evaluate early life stage effects, and consequently our approach is to obtain biological effects measurements (Biomarkers) on adult species, concurrently with early life stage effects.

Several aspects are considered in the selection of species, such as sensitivity and ecological importance. Exposure studies provide information regarding the type of effects which can be expected from certain types of pollutant (e.g. DNA damage, oxidative stress, immunotoxicological effects), and furthermorse, the studies result in threshold levels for different types of effects. Photo: Renee Bechmann - Click to enlarge

We aim to measure biomarkers at all levels of biological organisation, such as molecular (e.g. protein profile alterations), biochemical (enzyme activity), organelle (lysosomal stability), organ/tissue (immunohistochemistry, histopathology), and whole organism/physiology (immunotoxicology, clearance rate, oxygen uptake). Photo:Elisabeth Tønnesen - Click to enlarge

When this type of data has been obtained it is important to find a way to extract as much information as possible, and the most relevant information. It is not enough to consider the responses of individual parameters, as more information can be obtained when they are all combined. For this purpose we utilize multivariate statistical methods and non-linear statistical data modelling tools to model the complex relationships among biological and abiotic parameters (mainly toxicants) or to find patterns in biological data. This type of information can then be used in environmental risk assessment models.





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