Helgeland

As an element of the company's long-term strategy, North Energy carried out field work during the summer of 2010. The work was performed in co-operation with a field team from Akvaplan-niva AS, and is a continuation of corresponding work performed at Røst and Værøy in the summer of 2010. The work has included detailed documentation of areas and sites that are of natural and cultural significance in connection with environmental analyses and emergency preparedness assessments, and which are important to the planning and preparedness for acute oil pollution events.

For more in-depth information, see the article on the field work from last year.

Selection of areas

The Norwegian Directorate for Nature Management met administers overviews of protected and protection-worthy natural and recreational areas in Norway. This can be found in Naturbase, a digital map solution. with respect to seabird resources, the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research has made information available through their Web site, SEAPOP. Information from these sources was compared with results from calculations for oil spill contingency plans to select relevant areas encompassing protected areas, areas proposed for protection and areas assessed to be of importance to biological diversity. For cultural monuments, the Directorate for Cultural Heritage has a corresponding solution, Cultural Monument Search. This was used to identify stretches of coast with a high density of cultural monuments in their beach zones.

On the basis of this initial work, the following areas were selected for inspection and documentation:

• Lovunden, Træna and Sleneset
• Fleinvær, Bliksvær, Helligvær, Karlsøyvær and the southern parts of Steigen
• The field work

The field part of the work was performed at the end of July and the beginning of August 2010, and encompassed among other things the gathering of localised photographic material. Lovunden, Træna and Sleneset were inspected during the course of two days in week 29. The route of the journey is shown in the map for day 1 (20 July 2010) and day 2 (21 July 2010). During week 31, the other areas were inspected, with routes as shown for day 1 (3 August 2010) and day 2 (4 August 2010).

The extensive material was subsequently systematised and organised for different application areas. One of the goals of the work was that the material should be made available to the public through digital maps and the Internet. Moreover, on this page you will find links to selected themes presented in Google Maps, and it is also possible to download files that enable you to see the same material in Google Earth, with access to large-size photographs from the image server at Akvaplan-niva. The links are marked in blue - click on them to open the map or download files. Google Earth is a program that is freely available and can be downloaded here.

Results

A thematic map has been made in Google Maps giving examples of vulnerable species, habitats, landscapes and protective interests and the shoreline in parts of the area that have been examined. Links for downloading kmz files for use in Google Earth are collected together at the bottom of the page.

Further use of the material

North Energy will make additional use maps the material in further analysis and planning work, and also desires that the material find broad application among the local authorities and businesses. The complete photographic material (more than 2000 photographs) are extremely suited for communicating local expertise concerning important prioritised resources to all parts of an emergency preparedness organisation. Akvaplan-niva will ensure that this material is available on its image server, together with other localised photographs that the company has collected.

Downloading of files for use in Google Earth:

Vulnerable species and habitatsr 949.44 Kb
Landscapes and protective interests 1.20 Mb
Shoreline 1.28 Mb