title: A strategy for describing the biosphere at candidate sites for repositories of nuclear waste: linking ecosystem and landscape modeling.
abstract: To provide information necessary for a license application for a deep repository for spent nuclear fuel, the Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Co. has started site investigations at two sites in Sweden. In this paper, we present a strategy to integrate site-specific ecosystem data into spatially explicit models needed for safety assessment studies and the environmental impact assessment. The site-specific description of ecosystems is developed by building discipline-specific models from primary data and by identifying interactions and stocks and flows of matter among functional units at the sites. The conceptual model is a helpful initial tool for defining properties needed to quantify system processes, which may reveal new interfaces between disciplines, providing a variety of new opportunities to enhance the understanding of the linkages between ecosystem characteristics and the functional properties of landscapes. This type of integrated ecosystem-landscape characterization model has an important role in forming the implementation of a safety assessment for a deep repository.
authors.affiliation: Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Co., Stockholm. tobias.lindborg@skb.se
authors.forename: Tobias
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Lindborg
authors.forename: Regina
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Lindborg
authors.forename: Anders
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Löfgren
authors.forename: Björn
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Söderbäck
authors.forename: Clare
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Bradshaw
authors.forename: Ulrik
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Kautsky
mesh_terms: D017753:Ecosystem; D008004:Licensure; D011850:Radioactive Waste; D012449:Safety; D013548:Sweden; D018505:Waste Management / Q000379:methods* / Q000592:standards
chemical_list: D011850:Radioactive Waste