The INFLOW project
 
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Modified: 13.09.2011
INFLOW project  

 

INFLOW - Holocene saline water inflow changes into the Baltic Sea, ecosystem responses and future scenarios

 

Concept

Environmental conditions of the Baltic Sea’s (BS) ecosystem strongly depend on meteorological forcing over the area and adjacent NE Atlantic. It affects e.g. regional hydrography and saline water inflow from the North Sea into the BS. These changes are recorded in the BS sediments. We aim to identify forcing mechanisms of environmental changes of the BS, to differentiate natural variability and changing patterns due to man-made activity, by studying these sediment archives. In addition we will provide scenarios of the future development of the BS.

The acronyme INFLOW arises from the project title "Holocene saline water inflow changes into the Baltic Sea, ecosystem responses and future scenarios".


Understanding the past is the key for predicting the future

We will study ongoing and past changes in both surface and deep water conditions and their timing by means of multi-proxy studies. We use sediment proxy data along transect from the marine Skagerrak to the freshwater dominated northern BS. We have identified following aims:


  1. Quantification of the relationships between available long term instrumental data and signatures of recent sediments
  2. Extension of these studies to longer time scales (past 6000 years)
  3. Link these BS records to climatic data from the wider North Atlantic realm in order to identify the forcing mechanisms of environmental changes
  4. Produce model simulations for selected time slices back to 6000 years.
Proxy reconstructions will be compared to results from model simulations. We will use these evaluated models to provide selected scenarios of impact of naturally and human induced climate change on the BS ecosystem at the end of the 21st century.


Participants and Principal Scientists

Aarno Kotilainen (coordinator), Geological Survey of Finland (GTK), Finland

Thomas Neumann, Leibniz-Institute for Baltic Sea Research (IOW), Germany

Antoon Kuijpers, Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS), Denmark

Ian Snowball, Lund University, Sweden

Markus Meier, Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI), Sweden

Andrzej Witkowski, University of Szczecin, Poland

Eystein Jansen, Unifob AS, Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research (BCCR), Norway

Juha Karhu, Department of Geology, University of Helsinki, Finland

Mikhail Spiridonov, A. P. Karpinsky Russian Geological Research Institute (VSEGEI), Russia


Funding

INFLOW project is one of the BONUS research programme projects. INFLOW is funded by national funding agencies (Academy of Finland; Russian Foundation for Basic Research; Ministry of Science and Higher Education, Poland; Forschungszentrum Juelich Beteiligungsgesellsschaft; Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation; Swedish Environmental Protection Agency; Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning), the EU Commission and the participating organizations.

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Recent News
1.9.2011. Inflow well represented at BSSC in St. Petersburg Read more
11.4.2011. Inflow participated EGU General Assembly Read more
27.2.2011. Bonus EEIG highlights Inflow Read more
25.2.2011. Inflow workshop in Sweden Read more
13.10.2010. Danish Crown Prince visits IOW   Read more
13.10.2010. Baltic Samples at the North Sea   Read more
10.9.2010. INFLOW participated the Baltic Sea Geology - 10 conference in St. Petersburg   Read more
10.9.2010. INFLOW onboard RV Maria S. Merian  Read more
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