Tjóðsavnið received funding from the Research Council Faroe Islands
Photo: Skúli Skúlason
The Faroe Islands National Museum has received a grant over 975.837 DKK from the Research Council Faroe Islands for the project “Temporal changes in feeding ecology and life histories of Arctic charr and Brown trout in Faroese lakes”.
The project aims to identify effects of climate change on community structure and trophic ecology of fishes in small subarctic Faroese lakes. We compare feeding resources, fish diet and fish morphology across three small subarctic lakes: Leynavatn, Saksunarvatn and Toftavatn. These lakes represent contrasting combination of fish species. By studying what fishes eat, where they are found, and how/if they compete, we can identify how they can affect the whole lake ecosystem. We compare the contemporary data to those obtained in summer 2000 by the NORLAKE project, allowing an estimation of contemporary changes in salmonid species in the context of warming. We will also monitor water temperature at various depth in the lakes throughout the years.
This project will increase our spatial and temporal understanding of biodiversity of freshwater fishes in small subarctic lakes in the Faroes. This is of critical importance for successful conservation of biodiversity under the current climate and biodiversity crises.
The project is led by Agnes-Katharina Kreiling at the Faroe Islands National Museum, in collaboration with Hólar University, Iceland, and the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, as well as the Icelandic Museum of Natural History.