A retrospective view of the development of the Gulf of Bothnia ecosystem

Kuosa, Harri; Fleming-Lehtinen, Vivi; Lehtinen, Sirpa; Lehtiniemi, Maiju; Nygård, Henrik; Raateoja, Mika; Raitaniemi, Jari; Tuimala, Jarno; Uusitalo, Laura; Suikkanen, Sanna

doi:10.1016/j.jmarsys.2016.11.020

Cited by 51 publications

(52 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…The key environmental drivers affecting community composition and food‐web dynamics in the Baltic Sea are salinity, temperature and oxygen (BACC II, ; Leppäranta & Myrberg, ; Lindegren, Andersen, Casini, & Neuenfeldt, ; Lindegren, Möllmann, Nielsen, & Stenseth, ; Pecuchet et al, ). These drivers have been shown to affect also the taxonomic composition of coastal communities in Kattegat (Olsson et al, ; Rosenberg, Loo, & Möller, ), Baltic Proper (Olsson et al, ) and Bothnian Sea (Kuosa et al, ; Olsson et al, ), but in different ways. Hence, these drivers are primary candidates for affecting the temporal patterns in the functional diversity indices of fish and zoobenthos presented here, and may also be reasons for the weak relationship between the trends in fish and zoobenthos found.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This type of multi‐trophic assessment of different facets of temporal community change is also important for identifying, understanding and predicting larger ecosystem changes and dynamics, such as potential regime shifts that propagate across food web compartments (Folke et al, , Spencer et al 2011). In the Baltic Sea, studies on single species and taxonomic community composition have demonstrated abrupt changes in coastal areas (Olsson et al, ) or regime shifts in the offshore ecosystem (Blenckner et al, ; Casini et al, ; Kuosa et al, ; Lindegren et al, ; Möllman et al, ; Österblom et al, ), suggesting changes in the functioning of the system. In comparison, the long‐term gradual (step‐wise), linear trends and the low functional interlinkage we found in this study, provide no evidence for such abrupt changes in these coastal areas.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Four decades of functional community change reveals gradual trends and low interlinkage across trophic groups in a large marine ecosystem

Törnroos

Pécuchet

Olsson

et al. 2019

Global Change Biology

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The rate at which biological diversity is altered on both land and in the sea, makes temporal community development a critical and fundamental part of understanding global change. With advancements in trait‐based approaches, the focus on the impact of temporal change has shifted towards its potential effects on the functioning of the ecosystems. Our mechanistic understanding of and ability to predict community change is still impeded by the lack of knowledge in long‐term functional dynamics that span several trophic levels. To address this, we assessed species richness and multiple dimensions of functional diversity and dynamics of two interacting key organism groups in the marine food web: fish and zoobenthos. We utilized unique time series‐data spanning four decades, from three environmentally distinct coastal areas in the Baltic Sea, and assembled trait information on six traits per organism group covering aspects of feeding, living habit, reproduction and life history. We identified gradual long‐term trends, rather than abrupt changes in functional diversity (trait richness, evenness, dispersion) trait turnover, and overall multi‐trait community composition. The linkage between fish and zoobenthic functional community change, in terms of correlation in long‐term trends, was weak, with timing of changes being area and trophic group specific. Developments of fish and zoobenthos traits, particularly size (increase in small size for both groups) and feeding habits (e.g. increase in generalist feeding for fish and scavenging or predation for zoobenthos), suggest changes in trophic pathways. We summarize our findings by highlighting three key aspects for understanding functional change across trophic groups: (a) decoupling of species from trait richness, (b) decoupling of richness from density and (c) determining of turnover and multi‐trait dynamics. We therefore argue for quantifying change in multiple functional measures to help assessments of biodiversity change move beyond taxonomy and single trophic groups.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Four decades of functional community change reveals gradual trends and low interlinkage across trophic groups in a large marine ecosystem

Törnroos

Pécuchet

Olsson

et al. 2019

Global Change Biology

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“…Table 1) and in the well-oxygenated Bothnian Sea, the entire offshore areas show no signs of eutrophication (e.g., Raateoja, 2013;Rolff and Elfwing, 2015;Kuosa et al, 2017). Therefore, neither basin has been considered as requiring nutrient load reductions in the BSAP (HELCOM, 2007(HELCOM, , 2013b).…”

Section: Management Considerationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Yet, as has been noted by others and further discussed below, the unique geographical and biogeochemical features of the Baltic Sea make its ecosystem particularly vulnerable to external nutrient inputs and subject to eutrophication (e.g., Jansson, 1980;Voipio, 1981;Elmgren, 1989Elmgren, , 2001Jansson and Dahlberg, 1999). The symptoms and consequences of eutrophication at different scales and within different domains have been described and analyzed in hundreds of publications (e.g., Larsson et al, 1985;Davidan and Savchuk, 1989;Wulff et al, 2001b;Feistel et al, 2008;Cloern et al, 2016;Kuosa et al, 2017;Snoeijs-Leijonmalm et al, 2017b). From a mechanistic, explanatory point of view the eutrophication has also implicitly (Sjöberg et al, 1972;Stigebrandt and Wulff, 1987;Wulff and Stigebrandt, 1989) or explicitly (Savchuk, 1986(Savchuk, , 2002Savchuk and Wulff, 2009) been considered as an imbalance in biogeochemical cycles, resulting in nutrient accumulation when external inputs exceed permanent removals.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Large-Scale Nutrient Dynamics in the Baltic Sea, 1970–2016

2018

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The Baltic Sea is one of the world's marine areas well-covered by both long-term observations and oceanographic studies. It is also a large coastal area in which eutrophication had already been recognized half a century ago. While the mechanisms of eutrophication are largely understood, several features are less recognized and sometimes neglected, including: (a) natural and anthropogenic North-South and East-West nutrient gradients within the drainage basin and marine ecosystems; (b) the compensatory potential of the interconnectivity between the Baltic Sea basins; (c) long nutrient residence times and high buffer capacity of the system, resulting in slow responses to nutrient load reductions. Particularly important is the interaction of (d) naturally occurring saltwater inflows sporadically ventilating deep water layers and (e) a partly man-made intensification of biological oxygen consumption. Resulting redox alterations of biogeochemical nitrogen and phosphorus cycles are locked in a "vicious circle" that promotes cyanobacterial nitrogen fixation, thereby hindering nitrogen load reduction and sustaining an elevated trophic state. This tight coupling of natural environmental variation and human impacts complicates both scientific studies and management recommendations. Our primary objective is to describe all these features and mechanisms with the best available data on nutrient loads, and unique estimates of the basin-wide nutrient pools. These data are presented as both long-term time series and empirical nutrient budgets. The analysis is supplemented by results of biogeochemical modeling. A second, more practical objective is to make these time series available to the community.

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“…However, there is no monitoring of currents in that open-sea area. Kuosa et al (2017) have studied the development of the Gulf of Bothnia ecosystem and concluded that variation in deepwater inflow from the Baltic Proper has an effect on phyto-and zooplankton communities in the Bothnian Sea.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Estimating Currents From Argo Trajectories in the Bothnian Sea, Baltic Sea

et al. 2018

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Argo floats have been used in the environmental monitoring of the very shallow Bothnian Sea, a sub-basin of the Baltic Sea, for 5 years as part of the Finnish Euro-Argo programme. The Bothnian Sea is so far considered to be an environmentally healthy part of the Baltic Sea because the deep waters of the basin are well-ventilated by inflowing oxygen-rich saltier and heavier surface layer waters of the Baltic Sea proper. Thus the deep water flow is of interest in the Bothnian Sea. In this study, we used Argo float data from six different long-term missions, from 111 to 512 days, to analyze the deep-water flow in the Bothnian Sea where no continuous monitoring of currents exist. We estimated mainly the flow below the expected halocline from the paths of the floats. We analyzed the movements statistically and estimated the error caused by the surface drift of the floats during their stay at the surface by using 3D hydrodynamic model results as reference data. Our results show a northward flowing resultant current in the deep trench of the Bothnian Sea. There seemed to be very little exchange between coastal zone and open-sea waters in deeper layers. The drifting speed of the floats in the deep layers of Bothnian Sea generally was around 2 cm/s but instantaneous speeds of up to 30 cm/s in the middle-layer (50 dbars) were observed. In the Bothnian Sea deep, the deep trench on the Finnish side of the Bothnian Sea, the vast majority of the observations showed deep currents from south to north, with the same average speed of around 2 cm/s but the instantaneous maximum was smaller at 13 cm/s. Our study indicates that the routine Argo float observations can be used to get information on the deep currents in the basin in addition to hydrographic observations.

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A retrospective view of the development of the Gulf of Bothnia ecosystem

Cited by 51 publications

References 35 publications

Four decades of functional community change reveals gradual trends and low interlinkage across trophic groups in a large marine ecosystem

Four decades of functional community change reveals gradual trends and low interlinkage across trophic groups in a large marine ecosystem

Large-Scale Nutrient Dynamics in the Baltic Sea, 1970–2016

Estimating Currents From Argo Trajectories in the Bothnian Sea, Baltic Sea

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