Project: HYPoxia mitigation for Baltic Sea Ecosystem Restoration(HYPER)
Hypoxia in the Baltic Sea has become more frequent and widespread over the last century due to increased nutrient inputs from land and atmosphere. Sediments and the benthic faunal community play an important role for recycling nutrients, and the development of hypoxia may occur as cascading regime shifts leading to further deterioration of ecosystem health. Our present knowledge on processes leading to hypoxia is fragmented and discipline-specific, with strong repercussions for accurately computing nutrient reductions needed to restore the Baltic Sea. HYPER will synthesise this knowledge at an ecosystem scale and establish a holistic scientific understanding of the mechanisms leading to hypoxia and associated effects on benthic fauna. To achieve this HYPER will quantify nutrient feedback rates from the sediments over gradients of salinity, temperature and benthic community structure. HYPER will describe the temporal and spatial variability of these processes within the entire Baltic Sea and use this information for improving existing models describing the hydrodynamics and biogeochemistry. Required nutrient reductions to maintain a healthy ecosystem will be estimated taking future climate changes into account. The project will combine field and experimental work into a modelling framework for nutrient management via the Baltic Nest Institute. The project is carried out at 11 institutes covering 6 countries around the Baltic Sea.
| Acronym | HYPER (Reference Number: 43) |
| Duration | 01/10/2008 - 30/09/2011 |
| Project Topic | environmental research / marine ecosystem |
|
Project Results (after finalisation) |
http://www.bonusportal.org/files/1330/BONUS_Briefing_11_HYPER.pdf |
| Website | visit project website |
| Network | BONUS+ |
| Call | BONUS+ Call in 2007 |
Project partner
| Number | Name | Role | Country |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | University of Aarhus | Coordinator | Denmark |
| 2 | Finnish Environment Institute | Partner | Finland |
| 3 | University of Helsinki | Partner | Finland |
| 4 | Åbo Akademi University | Partner | Finland |
| 5 | Lund University | Partner | Sweden |
| 6 | Zoological Institute of the Russian academy of sciences | Observer | Russia |
| 7 | Utrecht University | Partner | Netherlands |
| 8 | Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research | Partner | Germany |
| 9 | University of Gdansk | Partner | Poland |
| 10 | Stockholm University | Partner | Sweden |