Project: Towards improved Baltic Sea environmental assessment and monitoring

Acronym	SEAM (Reference Number: call2017-21)
Duration	01/11/2018 - 30/04/2020
Project Topic	HELCOM and ICES organize a long-established coordination of monitoring in the Baltic Sea. It supports regular comprehensive environmental assessments and regular advice for fisheries management. European and Baltic Sea policy for the marine environment now presents demands for a variety of information on progress towards a good environmental status and the sustainability of ecosystem services. A key challenge is to ensure that monitoring activity serves the widest range of needs in a streamlined way. New innovations for data collection and interpretation may also offer possibilities for further refining approaches to provide an increased return of information on investments in monitoring. In this project we will identify gaps in relation to policy needs and scientific innovations and set out potential routes for improvement. In particular, we will critically analyse the adequacy of current Baltic Sea monitoring to support assessment requirements under different environmental polices. We will review recent innovative approaches for a more cost-effective collection of data and evaluate their potential application in an operational monitoring programme. These steps will lead to a proposal for a revised monitoring system for the Baltic Sea, which we will test with key policy and technical stakeholders. The analytical part of the project will focus on the offshore sub-basins, which requires particular coordination and cooperation between countries bordering the Baltic Sea.
Network	BONUS
Call	BONUS call 2017: Synthesis

Project partner

Number	Name	Role	Country
1	Göteborgs Universitet	Coordinator	Sweden
2	Tallinn University of Technology	Partner	Estonia
3	Technical University of Denmark	Partner	Denmark
4	Suomen ympäristökeskus	Partner	Finland
5	Leibniz-Institut für Ostseeforschung Warnemünde	Partner	Germany