SWEDISH SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES NETWORK

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Oceanography, Earth Sciences Centre, Göteborg University:

Postal address: Earth Sciences Centre, Göteborg University, Box 460, SE-405 30 Göteborg
Visiting address: Guldhedsgatan 5A
Fax: +46-31-773 28 88
Web site: http://www.gvc.gu.se/Earth+Sciences+Centre/Oceanography/

Contact persons: Professor Lars Rydberg, phone: +46-31-773 28 56, and
Lecturer Ulf Cederlöf (Deputy head of department), phone: +46-31-773 28 75

Research at the department connected to South Asia

The department has a long history of cooperation with universities in developing countries in different parts of the world like Asia, Africa and South America.

Professor Lars Rydberg has devoted some of his research to Water exchange in tropical lagoons, and tidal circulation in the Indian Ocean. In 1996 he and L Wickbom published the article Studies of tidal choking and bed friction in Negombo lagoon, Sri Lanka, in Estuaries; and in 1998 he published an article together with Ulf Cederlöf and H B Jayasiri, on ”The Mundel Lake estuarine system, Sri Lanka; possible measures to avoid extreme salinity and sea level variations”, in Ambio.
Lars Rydberg is also engaged in education and coastal research for MSc/PhD students from a number of developing countries, amongst them Sri Lanka. In the 1990s he was very much involved in setting up a Masters programme in Oceanography at the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. In September 2005 Prof. Rydberg got a project grant from Göteborg University to improve this collaboration project.

Ulf Cederlöf has done research on Oceanographic coastal processes in tropical regions.

Education programmes in collaboration with Sri Lanka

An education program for students from developing countries leading to a MSc degree in physical oceanography was established at the department in 1992. The basic concept comprised a 2.5 year course with intensive lecturing in Gothenburg for a period of 13 weeks per year. In between, field work and thesis writing was carried out by the participants at their mother institutions (a prerequisite was that the students were employed at a local university or at a marine institute back home).
Courses were started in 1992, 1995 and 1998, recruiting students from Tanzania, Kenya, Sri Lanka and Mocambique.

In 1995, a separate PhD program was launched. Four students from the first MSc group were accepted for PhD studies. This program comprised registration and examination at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (UDS) and at the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka (UP), respectively. Coursework and supervising was still handled from Gothenburg. This MSc program is however no longer running.

The PhD program has so far resulted in two completed theses; by E M S Wijeratne, on ”Tidal characteristics and modelling of tidal wave propagation in shallow lagoons of Sri Lanka” in 2001, and by K Arulananthan, on ”Hydrography, coastal water circulation and classification of Sri Lankan lagoons” in 2002. Arulanathan’s thesis was presented at the University of Peradeniya, Department of Physics. Both are now working as a Research Officers at the Oceanography Division of the National Aquatic Resources Research and Development Agency (NARA), Sri Lanka.