is to establish and strength a fruitful and long-term co-operation between Polish and Norwegian researchers focusing primarily on environmental and health research and between Norway and Poland in general. The Fund provides grant assistance for research projects and workshops/seminars. For more information see the web page http://www.fbn.opi.org.pl

Lecturers

Name	Expertise	Country
Dr Helge Balk	Data analysis	Norway
Dr Frank Reier Knudsen	Hydroacoustic equipment	Norway
Dr Malgorzata Godlewska	Acoustical assessment of ecosystem quality	Poland
Dr Joanna Szczucka	Marine hydroacoustics	Poland
Dr Jean Guillard	Use of multifrequency	France
Dr Ian Winfield	Macrophytes studies by acoustics	England
Dr Jan Kubecka	Horizontal beaming	Czech rep.

Venue

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: The word venue derives from the Latin venire (to come), and implies a place that people come to. The word may refer to: A venue as the location for a significant event.

The costal zone workshop will be held in Łeba (about 65 km from Gdańsk) in the Wodnik Hotel

More travel details will come later.

The Deep Lake and shallow water workshops will be held at Waszeta cabins situated beautifully on the Pluszne Lake bank in the Mazurian lake district. The closest large city is Olsztyn, from which transportation will be organized.

More travel details will come later.

In cooperation with

SIMRAD Horten, Norway
IOPAS Institute of Oceanology PAS, Sopot, Poland,
II PAS ERCE The International Institute of the Polish Academy of Science European Regional Centre for Echohydrology under the auspices of UNESCO, Łódź, Poland

Organizers

Stanisław Sakowicz Inland Fisheries Institute, Olsztyn, Poland
University of Oslo, Physics Department, Oslo, Norway

Rationale

Declines in water quality and quantity are currently two of the most critical factors limiting sustainable development. The new European Water Framework Directive requires that European countries achieve good ecological status of all surface waters by 2015. Traditional methods of assessing water quality are inadequate for large scale monitoring, are costly, and are labor and time-consuming. Additionally, they are based mainly on physico-chemical parameters of water, and do not take into account biological indicators, as recommended by the WFD. By contrast, novel hydro-acoustic methods offer a new potentially very effective remote sensing tool for monitoring of aquatic ecosystems. Echo sounding techniques can supply not only the basic information on fish abundance, individual sizes, spatial and temporal distribution patterns, but also on bottom sediments characteristics and macrophytes coverage, i.e. information on fish habitat. In opposite to traditional fishery methods, hydro-acoustics provides synoptic, high resolution, area-based data, easy for mapping using GIS, and not intrusive. The project focuses on the acquisition of technological competences in hydro-acoustics and advantages offered by hydro-acoustical techniques in ecosystem quality monitoring. It will consist of 3 workshops/training courses, each of them dedicated to different water bodies, types, that is: coastal zones, deep lakes and shallow waters.

Keywords: echo-sounders, Sonar5-Pro, acoustic analysis, biomass, fish, macrophytes, bottom,

Aim and topics of the workshops

The aim of the workshop is to provide theoretical and practical training on the use of an echosounder and software to answer the questions about the studied ecosystem, and in particular those elements that play decisive role in the assessment of the ecosystem quality such as:

· How many fish are there

· What is the fish size distribution

· What is biomass of fish, zooplankton

· What is the macrophyte cover

· What are the bottom habitats, etc.

The workshops are addressed both to those who have no experience neither in acoustics no acquisition and analysis software, and to those who have already experience, but want to learn more, in particular how to solve their problems using Sonar5 software.

When the participants leave the workshop, they shall be able to

Set up and calibrate the echo sounder.
Go out and record data..
Use the Sonar5 software to analyse data and to present the results
Avoid pitfalls such as overshooting, false bottom, incorrect parameters etc.
Recognize and handle various noise phenomena

How it will be arranged

These are workshops, not courses. There will be lectures covering the important topics, but the participants will also work in guided groups analyzing data and take part in field measurements. Each workshop will be adapted to what the participants want and at what level. The participants are encouraged to bring their own laptops. The Sonar5 software and data sets will be provided, but participants are also invited to send interesting datasets in advance for being studied and discussed during the workshops.

Topic overviews

If you have a special topic you want to be focused, not covered in the program of the workshop you plan to follow, please tell us and we will do our best to include it. Some topics have already been allocated according to wishes from the acoustic community.

The courses cover three different water bodies. There are different problems and challenges related to each of these and the courses will therefore differ. The costal zones are characterized with larger areas to be covered, and with targets that more often are schooling. Marine acoustics has its own traditions which differ from fresh waters.

The two other courses are more related with the shallow water being a continuation of the deep lake course.

For more information, please see the individual topic lists for

Contact

For questions, please contact

Małgorzata Godlewska Phone +48698343031 email: margogod@wp.pl

Helge Balk Phone +4797772401 email: hbalk(at).fys.uio.no www.fys.uio.no/~hbalk

Costal zone workshop secretary : dr Beata Schmidt, email: bschmidt@mir.gdynia.pl

Deep lakes workshop secretary : mgr Ewa Kanigowska, email: ewka@infish.com.pl

Shallow wate workshop secretary: mgr Ewa Kanigowska, email: ewka@infish.com.pl

Registration

To register for the workshops please open and fill out the registration form in doc or txt format, and send it by email to margogod@wp.pl or by ordinary mail to

Małgorzata Godlewska

Jałowcowa 27 m 6

04-955 Warszawa

Working on your own data?

Participants are invited to send interesting datasets in advance for being studied and discussed during the workshops.

Who will be funded / deadlines!

The number of workshop participants must be limited due to both, the effectiveness of the work in groups during training and the funds available from PNRF. 15 to 20 people in each workshop seem to be optimal. If the interest in workshops will exceed these numbers the organizers reserve the right to choose the participants. The final decision will be taken on 31 of March and participants, which send the registration form, will be informed about their acceptance or not, short after. Criteria will take into account such information as importance of the training for the work (scientific carrier) of participant, different countries representation (with Polish scientists having the priority), gender, etc. Participants accepted for the workshop will have all the costs (apart from travel) covered by the organizers. They may participate in other workshop if they wish to, but at their own cost (around 60 Euro).

Workshop material

Software and various echogram data sets will be provided to participants on CD’s.

Part of the material will also be downloadable from this homepage later.

Presentations

All ppt presentations can be requested by email to hbalk@fys.uio.no