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Welcome to NorBAF - the Nordic-Baltic Network for Benthic Algae in Freshwater!

This network is a cooperation of people working with freshwater benthic algae in the Nordic countries including Scandinavia, the Baltic countries, and Poland. Our objective is to develop contacts between educational institutions, research institutions and non-governmental organisations in the field of education and lifelong learning. The network is open to anyone who shares our interest, we are also cooperating with other algal groups in Europe. The network was started 2005 with financial help of Nordplus Neighbour and the Erken Laboratory, University of Uppsala, Sweden. Nordplus Neighbour is one of the Nordic Council of Ministers' five mobility and network programmes. Now, NorBAF is funded by a cooperation of the participants.

NEWS

• Registration now open: 7th Nordic-Baltic diatom intercalibration/harmonization exercise 2024!

  Dear Nordic-Baltic diatom colleagues!

  Registration is now open for the seventh Nordic-Baltic diatom intercalibration/harmonization exercise! Counting will be done in 2024, and the workshop is planned for 21-22 January 2025 at the Norr Malma field station, Sweden.

  Register by sending an email to maria.kahlert@slu.se with details on name, affiliation, and invoicing address no later than 15/12 2023. Costs will be 300 Euro excl. VAT, including the workshop. You will find all the details about samples, deadlines, and other, in the invitation letter 2024.

  For those unfamiliar with the previous exercises in 2007, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2016, and 2020, check the webpage http://www.norbaf.net for information.

  It is important to harmonize the diatom identification among the Nordic-Baltic diatomists in order to improve comparisons between different diatom studies, especially as diatom monitoring has increased because of the Water Framework Directive. Based on the experience from the activities in former years, the NorBAF participants agreed to continue with diatom intercalibrations every ~ 3rd to 4th year. SWEDAC (Swedish Board for Accreditation and Conformity Assessment) and SYKE (Finnish Environment Institute) are informed about our activities and the participation of Swedish and Finnish laboratories and consultants.

  For the 7th NorBAF intercalibration, the auditors will be Prof. Dr Bart Van de Vijver, Meise Botanic Garden, Iréne Sundberg, Senior miljökonsult, Medins Havs och Vattenkonsulter AB, Mölnlycke, and Eva Herlitz, Research engineer, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. Bart will also be teacher at the workshop, as before.

  Kind regards, Maria Kahlert, NORBAF network coordinator

  Reference: Kelly, M. (2001): Use of similarity measures for quality control of benthic diatom samples. Wat. Res. Vol. 35 (11), 2784-2788

Last intercalibrations

• For the results of the 6th intercalibration exercise 2020 click for this report
• For the results of the 5th intercalibration exercise 2016 click for this informal document
• For the results of the 4th intercalibration exercise 2013 click for this document
• For the results of the third intercalibration exercise 2011 click for this Powerpoint-presentation (27 MB)
• Second Nordic-Baltic diatom intercalibration/harmonization exercise 2009. Please click here for the report.
• Please see our online publication Harmonization is more important than experience � results of the first Nordic�Baltic diatom intercalibration exercise 2007 and the related Suggestions to solve identifications problems in the Courses & Meetings section!