// Reorientation in Contradictory landscape Sequence of investigations to see, find and understand flexibility in the Contradictory landscape in Nikel, and how to reorientate in this landscape. By looking closer into every landscape I make an attempt to grasp all of them as systems of information exchange, understand the landscapes character, find enough information to see and identify spaces in the landscapes to keep them alive and understand them and their overlapping.
// Defining the landscape in Nikel
The season space The atmospheric landscape
The time space The filter space
The enjoyable landscape
The water space The vegetation space
The dwelling spaces The cultural landscape
The delight space The routine space
The industrial landscape
The crude space The dark space
The street space The path landscape
The stroll space The plaza space
The tourist landscape
The nexus landscape
The drained landscape
The anima space The capsule space
The connection space The infrastructure space
The dying space The buried space
// Diagram of landscape overlapping The season space The atmospheric landscape
The time space The filter space
The enjoyable landscape
The water space The vegetation space
The dwelling spaces The cultural landscape
The delight space The routine space
The industrial landscape
The crude space The dark space
The street space The path landscape
The stroll space The plaza space
The tourist landscape
The anima space The capsule space
The nexus landscape
The drained landscape
The connection space The infrastructure space
The dying space The buried space
// The atmospheric landscape
The season space
The shifting weather conditions that influence the surroundings. People pack them selfs into warm clothes in the winter. Animals visit and vegetation grows while it is warm in the summertime.
The time space
The change from the morning sunrise to the evening sunset when the moon and the stars start to decorate the sky.
The filter space
The fluxing filter of sulphur dioxide that distorts the colours in the landscape.
// The season space in the atmospheric landscape
Air currents
Temperature
Precipitation
The winds are predominantly from the southwest in the Northern Hemisphere. But in the Summer they tend to come from the north east.
Average high and the average low temperature in Spring and Autumn is 8°C and down to -4°C. In the Summer the temperature goes from being around 0°C to 15°C and in the Winter the temperature stays under 0°C and goes down to -15°C.
The precipitation goes from being 22mm in Sring up to 23-63mm in the Summer. In Autumn it’s around 33-35mm, while it´s 23-33mm in the Winter. The main pollutants in snow are copper and nickel. Zones of maximum accumulation are located in the surroundings of Zapolyarny and Nikel.
// The time space in the atmospheric landscape
Spring: Sunshine hours in March are 120.9 and 183 in April. Spring & Summer
Autumn & Winter
Summer: There are 192.2 sunshine hours in May and they increase until July up to 235.6 hours. In August the sunshine hours decrease down to 155 hours.
Autumn: Sunshine hours in September are 90 and 46.5 in October. Winter: Sunshine hours in the wintertime are from 0 in January and December, 6 hours in November and up to 33.9 in February. that makes the town really dark and murky in these times.
// The filter space in the atmospheric landscape
Annual emissions
Monthly concentrations
Increased levels
Current annual emissions of sulphur dioxide are about 150 000 tons. However, the present emission is still above the critical level for sensitive biota in the Nikel-Pasvik area.
Average monthly concentrations of atmospheric SO2 in the surroundings of the nickel smelters depend on the wind conditions. The pollution level is also influenced by meteorological conditions unfavourable for dispersion of pollutants: calm weather, stagnation of air, fogs, periods of stable anticyclone circulation.
Increased levels of SO2 in the Nikel area are observed when winds are from the north and north-east. Making breathing diďŹƒcult and even burning holes in people’s umbrellas.
// The enjoyable landscape
The water space
The vegetation space
Where the sounds of the stream awakens an awerness of the vastness of the water. A lens with powers of reflection, spatial reversal, refraction, and the transformation of rays of light.
Plants that use water and sunlight to grow from soil. Each year blooming in the summer and withering away in the winter. Providing food for animals and people.
// The water space in the enjoyable landscape
Contamination of lakes
Surface waters
Lake Kuetsyarvi
The contamination of lakes by heavy metals (nickel and copper) is more severe than acidification, especially in the vicinity of the smelters, where damage to fish populations as well as phytoplankton and invertebrate communities are observed. The absence of older individuals of brown trout and Arctic char in inlet and outlet streams indicated low survival with age.
Acidification of surface waters is usually followed by reductions of relative species richness and abundance of sensitive taxa, such as mayflies, stoneflies, amphipoda and snails, but also by an increase in the relative abundance of tolerant taxa (diptera, water bugs and water beetles).
An extremely high abundance of chironomids has been recorded in Lake Kuetsyarvi, where simultaneous eects of heavy metals and nutrients on invertebrates occurred. The toxic eects of heavy metals may be neutralised by high organic matter and calcium concentrations, also apparently due to morphological peculiarities of the lake (the prevalence of shallow areas with vegetation) and relatively high water exchange.
// The vegetation space in the enjoyable landscape
Vegetation
In this area scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) and downy birch (Betula pubescens) are the dominant tree species in the region. Dwarf birch (Betula nana), bilberry (Vaccinium myrtillus) and epiphytic lichen vegetation do also grow in the area.
Invertebrate animals
The invertebrate animals in the area are beetles from the Elateridae family which are highly sensitive to pollution. Species from the Aranea, Diptera and Formicidae families are more tolerant.
Vertebrate animals
The vertebrate animals in the area are small mammals (the northern vole Microtus oeconomus, the grey-sided vole Clethrionomys rufocanus and the common shrew Sorex araneus), the willow grouse (Lagopus lagopus) and the brown frog Rana temporaria. These are animals that occupy small areas in a polluted territory and do not make distant migrations are therefore susceptible to air pollution.
// The cultural landscape
The dwelling space
The delight space
The routine space
Where you can feel the essence of the people. Personal space where the little girl feels safe. She decorates her room from her heart and emotions. This is the space inside the Cultural landscape where people live and call there home.
Where people meet, get together and enjoy themselves. Where parents meet to watch their children’s school play. Families relax and laugh together at a resturant. The space inside the Cultural landscape where people spend enjoyalbe time together with some activity.
The space where people have to go to make a living. Where you can see an old lady buying food or a young child lerning how to read or write. The space where you learn, work or buy things to survive in the world.
// The dwelling space in the cultural landscape
Outside
Inside
The apartment buildings in Nikel are mostly build out of concrete, the wooden houses were made out of trees that existed in Nikel before. The houses the Finns built are better houses than the Russians built. The apartment buildings are mostly painted in pastel colors, but because of the filter space they often get leyerd with membrane of pollution.
Most of the people in Nikel live in three bedroom apartments. Usually the kitchen is the womans space in Russian culture, and she takes care of the household and cooking. There is also a habit in Russian culture for renovating the inside of the house every other year or more. The inside of the apartments are often a field of expression.
// The delight space in the cultural landscape
Entertainment
There are some houses around town like the Culture house and the cinema that people gether and watch theatre, movies, art exhibition or a school play.
Restaurants
A place where people sometimes go to have dinner with friends. A usual place where tourists stop by and have dinner to get to know the traditional Russian food.
Garages
The garages are a traditional Russian field of garages gathered in one or more parts of the town. Usually the garages are owned by a man and not a family. This is the mans space, where he can potter about, fix his car or build things. Sometimes the garage is even turned into sauna. This place in town is where people often get together and have parties.
// The routine space in the cultural landscape
Workplace
The places people work and make a living. Shops, stores, the school, the culture house, the nickel factory, the cinema. They spend most hours during the day at these places.
Convenience store
Some people work there, but everybody go there few times a week to get necessary supplies for food and regular houshold.
School & leisure
Children go to school and often have a spare time hobby or sport that they practice after school.
// The industrial landscape
The crude space
The dark space
The fixed visible steel structure that is evident from every direction around Nikel. The machinemade materials of the structure that send the echo of the hidden workers on the inside out to the landscapes.
The unknown space inside the steel structure, that is hidden from the outsider. The filled space that touches the individual directly, envelopes him, penetrates him, and even passes trough him.
// The crude space in the industrial landscape
Building
Most parts of the buildings is made out of steel and almost every building is painted in dierent color. Red, blue, yellow, brown, white, gray and so forth.
Smokestack
The smokestacks are white and red, they let the sulphur dioxide out into the atmosphere and the ecosystem.
// The dark space in the industrial landscape
Dark tunnels
Hidden spaces
The dark underground tunnels go eight storeys down to the ground and they stretch all the way under the city.
It’s hard to know exactly how things are inside the building structure but there is a lot of heat and raw crude atmosphere according to the pictures and raeding material available on the Internet.
// The path landscape
The street space
The path that connects cities together and people use various kind of vehicles as an traveling method. This space connectes and overlap many dierent landscapes.
The stroll space
Small paths that a mother uses to walk to the supermarket. A path family strolls on when picking mushrooms in The vegetation space. The paths that the tourist can see trace of in The dying space. The stroll space is connected to many dierent spaces, connects them and overlaps alot of landscapes.
The plaza space
A space where people gather, this space is always connected to The stroll space or The street space. This is a space where kids drive theyr model car, play hide and seek, and parents sit down or play with their kids.
// The street space in the path landscape
Materials
The roads that lead to Nikel are in unequal condition, the asphalt is not taken care of and that can make the roads unsafe.
Warning signs
The road signs show traveling people where to go, how fast they can drive and other guidlines. They are in Russian language.
// The stroll space in the path landscape
Materials
Street signs
In the town of Nikel the walking paths are mostly asphalt and some times flagstone laying. The smaller paths are often formed after people, and are walking paths of ground and soil.
The streetsigns show people the name of the street they are walking on and the numbers of houses, they work as a compass. The signs are written in Russian language.
// The plaza space in the path landscape
Squares
Playground
The main square is defined in front of the Culture house and is filled with Ideological signs and flagstone laying on the ground around a statue of Lenin. There are benches that people can rest on and steps up to the square.
Playgrounds for kids, where parents can play with them and kids can play together. The materials are mostly tyres that rope in the space, steel struktures that kids can climb on and then soil and ground.
// The tourist landscape
The anima space
The capsule space
Part of the traveller that is directed inward and is in touch with the subconscious. Which influences one’s actions and feelings, it’s connected to the travellers experience from childhood and saga.
The travellers physical form. The body and its senses, muscles and bones that the traveller understands the landscape and space he/she is experiencing.
// The anima space in the tourist landscape
Saga
Mind
Memory is the ability to preserve, retain, and subsequently recall, knowledge, information or experience. Previous experiences in peoples life can influence theyr way of thinking and looking up on things they see or encounter.
Thought is a mental activity which allows human beings to make sense of things in the world. Thinking involves the symbolic or semantic mediation of ideas or data, as when we form concepts, engage in problem solving, reasoning and making decisions. The part of the psyche that is directed inward, and is often in touch with the subconscious. Imagination and consciousness.
// The capsule space in the tourist landscape
Body
Senses
Peoples physical structure, bones, flesh, and organs. The physical and mortal aspect of a person as opposed to the soul or spirit.
Senses are physiological capacities of organisms that provide inputs for perception. The senses and their operation, classification, and theory are overlapping topics studied by a variety of fields, most notably neuroscience, cognitive psychology (or cognitive science), and philosophy of perception. The nervous system has a specific sensory system or organ, dedicated to each sense.
// The nexus landscape
The connection space
The infrastructure space
The lines in the air that overlap landscapes and carry electricity and electrical signals between places. It connects places and people with each other. They appear translucent to our eyes.
Wooden and steel structures that carry The connection space between places. They are very visible to our eyes and they follow a line of The path landscape.
// The connection space in the nexus landscape
Material & purpose
Specialized cable designed to carry alternating current of radio frequency, that is, currents with a frequency high enough that their wave nature must be taken into account. Transmission lines are used for purposes such as connecting radio transmitters and receivers with their antennas, distributing cable television signals, and computer network connections.
// The infrastructure space in the nexus landscape
Materials
Signs
Wooden poles, stones and wire. The infrastructure is often nowadays made out of steel structure that has a stronger structure and is more stable.
The poles often have warning signs on them as well as some kind of numbers for location.
// The drained landscape
The dying space
The plants that struggle to stay alive, absorbing the toxic waste that is sent out into The atmospherical landscape from The dark space. This space has been bent so far that its almost completely broken.
The buried space
Where the life has been sucked out of the soil, plants have struggled to stay alive but slowly been “buried alive�.
// The dying space in the drained landscape
Sensitive ecosystems
For sensitive ecosystems the critical levels have been exceeded on more than 3200 square kilometres of Russian and Norwegian territory, of which approximately 2400 square kilometres were on Russian territory.
Catchment area
Long-term dynamics show high accumulation levels of nickel and copper in rivers and in the whole catchment area. Increased concentrations of pollutants in water reservoirs, which are not subject to the direct impact of emissions, especially during the spring and rain flood-water periods, are evidence of the significant role of atmospheric transfer.
Forest damage
Based on forest vitality, 4 classes of forest damage were identified within the industrially impacted territory. The extent of the forest damage decreased with increasing distance from the emission source.
// The buried space in the drained landscape
10 to 12 km from the smelter
Jarfjord Mountain area
Vicinity of the smelters
Susceptibility to environmental pollution enhances forest decline. The distribution of forest stands by sensitivity classes indicated high sensitivity of pine forests within 10 to 12 km from the smelter, corresponding to severe damage to forest stands.
The Jarfjord Mountain area, which is located north of Nikel, has been assessed as being the most influenced, together with a narrow zone west of Nikel.
The combined negative impact of sulphur and heavy metal pollution resulted in an area of severe forest damage in the vicinity of the smelters, i.e. on Russian territory, is about 1600 km2. The area can be described as an oval that stretches from south to north and influenced by the dominant wind direction and landscape feature.