Place: Coastal Research and Planning Institute, Klaipeda University, Lithuania

Registration: To register please send your contact information to Jolita Petkuviene (jolita.petkuviene@gmail.com) not later than 15^th of December 2011. Hurry up, the number of participants is limited.

More information about the course is given in the attachment.

Organizer: Association „Baltic Valley“

Lecturer – prof. Timothy G. Bromage, New York University.

The public lecture will take place on 31^st of May, at 11 a.m. in Klaipeda Science and Technology Park, conference hall (H.Manto str.84, Klaipėda). Speech of the lecture – english.

KLAIPEDA: 9 February 2011 / 09:00 to 16:30

A hands-on technical workshop for academics, and for Federal and State environment, habitat, and wildlife bioscience and geoscience professionals.

Acoustic theory will be combined with bottom classifcation processing of digital image backscatter data from multibeam, sidescan and interferometric sonar systems.

Kindly please bring your laptop!

Practice hands-on seabed classifcation techniques with Quester Tangent’s full working software. The tutorial takes you through data processing, mapping and visualization.

We provide a 30 day license of QTC SWATHVIEW and QTC CLAMS.

The association “Baltic valley” as organiser in conjunction with emma technologies is looking forward to meeting you in Klaipeda.

Preparation of scientific collaboration project with partners from Russia, NATO and other countries to be implemented according to NATO-Russia Committee programme on „Science for peace and security“

Relevance of the problem:

One of the key tasks, mentioned among the most important in Baltic Sea Region Strategy is to make the Baltic Sea Region a Safe and Secure Place. The Action Plan of the mentioned strategy defines following priority fields: to become a leading region in maritime safety and security; to reinforce maritime accident response capacity protection from major emergencies. Transport by sea is expected to increase significantly in the coming years in the Baltic Sea and with that comes a higher risk for accidents. Strategic location of the Baltic Sea is convenient for the development of major oil transportation routes, specifically from Russia, which carries out the oil mining in the Baltic Sea. The main oil terminals of Lithuania are operating in Klaipeda and Būtingė. Their activities pose a hazard to the environment. Seeking to reduce the risk of extreme situations and their possible impact on Baltic Sea ecosystems the need of mutual cooperation among Lithuania and Russia, based on existing scientific knowledge, is of major importance.

Project objective:

Development of response operations for the better responding possibilities to oil spills in order to conserve the Baltic Sea environment and strengthen the cooperation among countries.

Project goals:

• Improvement of oil spills observation methods and expansion of remote methods application possibilities.
• Improvement of the modelling methods of oil spills drifting in the open sea, nearshore, estuaries and lagoons.
• Preparation of the Baltic Sea oil spills sensitivity maps based on natural, social and economic factors.
• Analysis of dispersants impact on the Baltic Sea ecosystem and evaluation of their possible application in South-Eastern Baltics
• Analysis of new investigation methods and their applicability for the evaluation of oil spills and environmental monitoring in high risk zones (including the improvement of existing monitoring programmes in terminals).
• Analysis of oil transportation and mining activities and their possible impact on the environment.

Minutes of the project conference (pdf)

Conference presentations:

• Z. Gasiūnaitė Reduction of oil spills impact on Baltic Sea environment and development of response operations
• H. Nilsson Baltic Master II – Land based oil spill response
• E. Smite Cooperation of HELCOM countries in combating pollution accidents in the Baltic Sea: current state and future perspectives
• A. Kontautas Assessing Fisheries Impacts Assessing Fisheries Impacts from Oil spills – Butinge case
• Pipelines and terminal operations division
• S. Suzdalev Applying to NATO SPS Possibility for further cooperation
• J. Morkūnas Oiled Wildlife Response Planning
• I. Kuzmenko Existing response system of oil spills accidents at sea and its development tendencies in Lithuania
• J. Skrube Existing response system of oil spills accidents at sea and its development tendencies in Latvia
• V. Langas Pollution damage liability and compensation issues related to offshore activities
• T. Bukanova, V. Sivkov, V. Bukanov Results of satellite monitoring of oil pollution in the South-Eastern Baltic in 2004-2010
• C. Ambjörn Seatrack Web, the HELCOM tool for oil spill prediction and identification of illegal polluters
• D. Depellegrin Mapping the Lithuanian Baltic Sea coast sensitivity to oil spills
• Program of NATO-Russia Committee on „Science for peace and security“

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