The BONUS BLUEWEBS project partner meeting took place at Institute BIOR on May 29-31
The BONUS BLUEWEBS project partner meeting took place at Institute BIOR on May 29-31. In the meeting 17 participants from Finland, Sweden, Germany, Poland and Latvia discussed questions related to project implementation and partner’s responsibilities. The project is structured into 6 highly connected Work-Packages (WPs). WP leaders identified the main goals of the project, practical methods and connectivity between WPs.
BLUEWEBS is designed to deliver an assessment of the consequences of achieving good environmental status (GES) as well as Blue Growth (BG), i.e. the capability of Baltic Sea food webs to sustainably produce ecosystem goods and services. GES and BG are the two main goals in today’s policy frameworks and trade-offs between them need to be considered when implementing ecosystem-based management (EBM) approaches. Achieving optimal/sustainable trade-offs is challenged by the multifaceted nature of external impacts on Baltic Sea ecosystems. Global climate change will likely result in novel climates, leading to combinations of physical oceanographic conditions never encountered before. These will affect ecosystems in addition to the regional anthropogenic impacts of eutrophication, fisheries exploitation, invasion of non-indigenous species and accumulation of hazardous substances. These cumulative impacts have already (and will likely continue in the future) cause novel food webs that significantly differ in structure and function from historical predecessors. Novel food webs in concert with novel climates will likely render present management tools and measures unsuitable and hence challenge the ability of society to achieve GES while safeguarding a BG potential.
Institute BIOR main tasks in the first stage of the project:
- Data preparation and inclusion in the database on long-term changes in Baltic Sea phytoplankton, zooplankton, zoobenthos abundance, feeding ecology and functional traits;
- Structural and functional analysis of the Baltic Sea food web;
- Preparation of cod otolith material for stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analyses.
Institute of Food Safety, Animal Health and Environment “BIOR” in consortium with the main project coordinator Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE) and 7 partners from Finland, Germany, Poland and Sweden begins to implement the BONUS BLUEWEBS project (“Blue growth boundaries in novel Baltic food webs”). The total costs of the project are 2,8 million EUR, the Institute’s BIOR share is EUR 148 430,40, where 50% financed by the European Commission and 50% by the Latvian state budget.
The project will be implemented in three stages from 01.04.2017 to 31.03.2020.
