Site Specification
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This study handles the South Archipelago and the southwest mainland of Gothenburg. The area is situated in the southwestern parts of Sweden, with the coast to the Kattegat sea. The area is influenced by the Göta Älv river that has its river mouth within the city.
Two types of currents are mainly present in the Kattegat; The Baltic current and the Jutland current. The Baltic is a low dense, low salinity current that flow from the Baltic sea towards the North sea with a northerly direction in the Kattegat. In difference, the Jutland current is denser with a higher salinity originating from the North sea that flows around the danish north coast, where it continues up north along the swedish west coast (Källa SMHI).
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The coastline consist mostly of barren bedrocks, on the mainland of granitoids and in the archipelago of metagreywacke, paragneisses, quartzites and metabasalts. They are old as the rock itself as we say in Sweden, about 1.6-1.5 Ga (SGU). Postglacial- and glacial clay are the dominant sediments that are deposited on land and in sea (Ekelund, 2007). Beaches is also present, but are limited in bays along the shoreline (Naturvårdsverket miljödatabas). To the right, a marine geological map from SGU is illustrating the distribution of sediment and bedrock in the study area.
IIn the beginning of the Gothenburg history, the 17th century, the city was founded as a fortress city, to defend the Göta Älv river from the danish. The river, is and has been, an important transport way for further international trading, especially with the germans. The city was developed to a big commercial town in the 18th century (Andersson, 1996), and later on, in the middle of 19th century, to an industrial city with an extensive harbour activity with dockyards along the river mouth (Wimarson, 1923). Today Gothenburg has the biggest harbour in the north of Europe. The dockyards are almost gone since the shipyard crisis in the late 1970s, and the harbour is more quiet these days (Nationalencyklopedin, 2017). But the tracers of the hard extensive activity is still present in the area, in the sediment.
Today Gothenburg has the biggest harbour in the north of Europe, with some well-known visitors e.g. Maersk. The dockyards are almost gone since the 1970s and the harbour is more quiet these days. But the tracers of the hard extensive not-environmental-friendly activity is still present in the area.. in the sediment. (källa coming soon).
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Environmental Setting
The southern archipelago of Gothenburg is a complex system where there is many factors that are influencing. The environmental sketch done over the area tries to illustrate it in graspable way. The houses in the sketch illustrate the living areas and the affects they brings. Cars, busses and railways illustrates the infrastructure on land. There is also traffic on water, by ferries in different sizes, cargo vessels and private owned boats. The ferries and cargo vessels has to the most part their destination in the harbor in Göta Älv. The boats however, goes between small boat harbors all along the coast as well as on the different islands. There is also industries that affects the environmental aspects, as well as a couple of landfills (black garbage bags).
How contaminants are spread are illustrated by the red arrows. The stronger they are the more influence they have. The blue arrows illustrates the water currents (the currents within the archipelago are not jet illustrated).
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