Institute ”BIOR” starts to implement the first stage of the BONUS BLUEWEBS project

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 on April 1, this year begins to implement the BONUS BLUEWEBS project (Nr. call2015-30 “Blue growth boundaries in novel Baltic food webs”).

BLUEWEBS expected outcomes:

1. Analysis of the Baltic Sea food web structure and function.
2. Improved understanding of the impacts of major drivers on food web structure and function.
3. Quantitative information on temporal and spatial dynamics of predators and prey.
4. Integrated models that encompass key trophic levels and include complex physical-biological and biogeochemical processes and allow for thresholds between different ecosystem states.
5. Assessment of the effects of environmental degradation on the capability of Baltic Sea food webs to cycle and transform nutrients and hazardous substances.
6. Assessment of the consequences of achieving good environmental status on the capability of the Baltic Sea food webs to sustainably produce ecosystem goods and services.

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.