25. April 2024
A new study from COAT uncovers suitability of habitats for the three key herbivorous species in the Norwegian high Arctic Island group Svalbard: the Svalbard reindeer, the Svalbard rock ptarmigan,...

15. March 2024
COAT contributes with two articles to FRAM FORUM 2024, which was launched on 14 March. The magazine contains knowledge and research produced by the institutions at the Fram Centre, FRAM - High...

7. November 2023
The red fox trapping season in Varanger for COAT’s arctic fox module has started again! So far we caught 2 red foxes this year, a young male and an adult female. Both were equipped with GPS...

18. October 2023
Camera traps have become a popular tool in nature science. An example of this is the novel camera trap method we have developed in COAT for monitoring of small mammals. This method provides...

4. October 2023
Geometrid moths are insects with a holometabolic life cycle. This means that the larvae, which feed on the leaves of birch trees in summer, undergo a complete metamorphosis into adult moth during...

11. September 2023
This report from this year's COAT fieldwork in Svalbard deals with our monitoring of eastern voles and arctic foxes in Svalbard, mainly in the area around Isfjorden.

25. January 2023
Small rodents are crucial to the functioning of the tundra food-web because of their spectacular population cycles which gives the predators waste amounts of food in the peak years and cause a...

20. January 2023
Why is it interesting for a researcher to dig in the snow in January? It's just snow there, isn't it? Yes, it is snow, but we want to know what type of snow, and whether there are hard...

11. October 2022
The 6th International arctic fox conference was arranged by the Norwegian Polar Institute in Longyearbyen 26-29 August. The conference was held at the University Centre in Svalbard and had in...

13. September 2022
Long-term monitoring represents a baseline approach for climate-ecological studies. Analyses and modeling of such monitoring data provide opportunities to generate explanatory predictions, used to...

7. September 2022
This year's counting trip has been completed and many reindeer were counted on the isolated peninsulas on the west coast of Svalbard. These localities form one of the core areas for monitoring...

30. August 2022
COAT has modeled the population fluctuations of willow ptarmigan in Finnmark and looked at what influences changes in the population. The modeling is the result of a collaboration between COAT and...

26. August 2022

Despite moderate abundances of rodents (an increase phase year) 12 arctic fox litters and 76 pups have been registered on Varanger Peninsula so far this summer.

12. July 2022
COAT has modeled the population fluctuations of willow ptarmigan in Finnmark and looked at what influences changes in the population. The modeling is the result of a collaboration between COAT and...

13. June 2022
On 8th of June Eivind Kleiven has successfully defended his PhD thesis “Population cycles in small rodents seen through the lens of a wildlife camera".

8. June 2022
On the 3rd of June Pedro Da Silva Nicolau has successfully defended his PhD thesis “Boreal rodents fluctuating in space and time. Tying the observation process to the modeling of seasonal...

2. June 2022
On 24th of May Isabell Eischeid has successfully defended her PhD thesis “Tundra vegetation ecology from the sky - Aerial images and photogrammetry as tools to monitor landscape change”.

13. May 2022
Members of COAT Varanger’s ptarmigan module has recently deployed the sound stations for this year’s monitoring in the study area just above Bergebydalen in Nesseby municipality. This work started...

29. April 2022
COAT have in collaboration with Rovfuglgruppa I Vest-Finnmark, for the fourth consecutive year, checked how many gyrfalcons, golden eagles and ravens that are attempting to breed on the Varanger...

19. April 2022
We have started a large carcass-project in Svalbard and the first pictures is already collected. It will be interesting to see how the predators behave. The project is a collaboration between...

18. February 2022
You may have heard about our gps-tracking project of red foxes on Varanger Peninsula. You can now participate by exploring the latest positions on this interactive and automatically updated map.

9. February 2022
SUSTAIN was a nationally coordinated research project funded by the Research Council of Norway during 2015-2021. The project included three geographic nods (research groups): Centre for Ecological...

8. December 2021
COAT researchers monitor vegetation disturbances by biotic and abiotic factors, such as herbivory and extreme winter weather. However, these are not typical vegetation classes included in...

14. October 2021
COAT expands the vegetation monitoring at Svalbard, now including drones and high-resolution imagery. The team is learning to use advanced equipment to capture not only changes in the...

29. September 2021
COAT has modeled the population fluctuations of willow ptarmigan in Finnmark and looked at what influences changes in the population. The modeling is the result of a collaboration between COAT,...

16. June 2021
Long time series are important for understanding changes in nature. Despite extensive research on vegetation in Svalbard, long-term monitoring has been lacking. But we can now present “Year 1” of...

29. March 2021
Snow measurements are an important part of the monitoring done in COAT – snow is indeed an important driver of many processes underlying dynamics of arctic ecosystems. The measurements we do focus...

11. February 2021
In the first week of February, a small team from COAT and local experts Alfred Ørjebu and John Arne Kristiansen placed 3 wooden box traps designed for live trapping red foxes in southeastern...

27. November 2020
Management of endangered species by culling mesopredators is increasingly common. To what extent such programs work as intended, is less clear. In a new study, COAT researchers evaluated the...

13. October 2020
Vegetation monitoring was carried out in late July and early August in Komagdalen and Vestre Jakobselv on the Varanger peninsula. Besides the annual monitoring in heath and meadow sites, the...

28. September 2020
The average temperature for June, July and August at Svalbard Airport was 7.2 degrees, which is 3 degrees above normal, and 0.5 degrees above the old summer record from 2015. For Svalbard Airport,...

24. September 2020
There were five dens with confirmed reproduction this summer, despite the low small rodent abundance. Three were in the eastern half of the Peninsual and two further to the west. It is likely that...

24. September 2020

Thanks to local forces already in Svalbard and Ingrid traveling up, the annual vegetation monitoring in Svalbard was successfully carried out despite restrictions to travel due to covid-19.

28. August 2020
The new Reconyx cameras adapted to COAT’s small mammal photoboxes arrived (at last!) in August and have just enabled us to finalize the monitoring system for the invasive Eastern European vole...

25. August 2020
The COAT article “Can novel pest outbreaks drive ecosystem transitions in northern-boreal birch forest?” in Journal of Ecology was shortlisted for the Harper Prize early researcher award earlier...

24. March 2020
Recently the Moss Tundra Module by Ravolainen et.al has published the paper High Arctic ecosystem states: Conceptual models of vegetation change to guide long-term monitoring and research in...

24. March 2020
The Research Council of Norway has funded a new three-year project that will be led by core personnel from the tundra-forest module of COAT.

18. March 2020
Fram Forum is an annual popular scientific publication of the Fram Centre. COAT researchers contribute with several articles in the 2020 issue.

6. February 2020

On January 27^th Statens Naturoppsyn (SNO) together with Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA) and COAT released 14 arctic fox pups on Varanger Peninsula.

13. December 2019

COAT researchers Ole Petter Laksforsmo Vindstad and Jane Uhd Jepsen have won the first Fægri price for an article on geometrid moths in the Norwegian popular science journal Naturen.

8. October 2019

COAT Svalbard has now implemented and operationalized several types of research infrastructure in the core areas in Nordenskiöld Land and in Brøgger Peninsula.

27. September 2019

COAT Varanger has established small rodent exclosures that distinguish between direct and indirect climate impacts on vegetation.

28. August 2019
As a part of the project COAT-Tools we are collaborating with the department of computer science here at UiT. They are working on sensor technology that can help us collect the data we need in an...

2. August 2019
Climate change is expected to impact area use and dispersal movements in Arctic animals, and this is best documented by means of satellite-transmitters. Such instruments equipped on species like...

26. July 2019
The working groups of the Arctic Council conduct periodic assessments of state of the Arctic environment. In 2013, COAT researcher led a comprehensive assessment of Arctic tundra ecosystem (Ims et...

1. July 2019
Many arctic bird populations have declined substantially during the last decades. Preliminary analyses in connection with the development of an ecosystem-based assessment system for Norwegian...

23. May 2019
In the end of April COAT Varanger conducted its spring-fieldwork. This year the spring-fieldwork consisted of the yearly deployment of sound stations by the ptarmigan module and start-up of...

19. December 2018
NEW! COAT CASE STORIES are short popular handouts from COAT. This second COAT CASE STORY about the community-based actions against an invasive rodent and its zoonotic parasite in Longyearbyen...

19. November 2018

Screening of the photos from trail cameras has just revealed that one arctic fox litter was born on Varanger Peninsula this summer.

6. November 2018
We proudly announce that the first three COAT weather stations at the Varanger peninsula are now installed. They started transmitting data during the first week of October. The stations are...