Human impacts and their interactions in the Baltic Sea region

Abstract

Abstract. Coastal environments, in particular heavily populated semi-enclosed marginal seas and coasts like the Baltic Sea region, are strongly affected by human activities. A multitude of human impacts, including climate change, affect the different compartments of the environment, and these effects interact with each other. As part of the Baltic Earth Assessment Reports (BEAR), we present an inventory and discussion of different human-induced factors and processes affecting the environment of the Baltic Sea region, and their interrelations. Some are naturally occurring and modified by human activities (i.e. climate change, coastal processes, hypoxia, acidification, submarine groundwater discharges, marine ecosystems, non-indigenous species, land use and land cover), some are completely human-induced (i.e. agriculture, aquaculture, fisheries, river regulations, offshore wind farms, shipping, chemical contamination, dumped warfare agents, marine litter and microplastics, tourism, and coastal management), and they are all interrelated to different degrees. We present a general description and analysis of the state of knowledge on these interrelations. Our main insight is that climate change has an overarching, integrating impact on all of the other factors and can be interpreted as a background effect, which has different implications for the other factors. Impacts on the environment and the human sphere can be roughly allocated to anthropogenic drivers such as food production, energy production, transport, industry and economy. The findings from this inventory of available information and analysis of the different factors and their interactions in the Baltic Sea region can largely be transferred to other comparable marginal and coastal seas in the world.

Climate change in the Baltic Sea region: a summary

“…In Sect. 4, the interactions of climate with other anthropogenic drivers are summarised from Reckermann et al (2022). As the adjacent North Sea has different physical characteristics and topographical features but is located in a similar climatic zone as the Baltic Sea, we compare the results of this assessment with the results of the North Sea Region Climate Change Assessment (NOSCCA; Quante and Colijn, 2016;Sect.…”

“…9. Human impacts and their interactions in the Baltic Sea region (Reckermann et al, 2022). The interlinking of factors controlling environmental changes.…”

“…Other external drivers of climate and environmental variability are internal random variations in the climate system, land use, eutrophication, contaminants, litter, river regulations, fishery, aquaculture, underwater noise, traffic, spatial planning, etc. (see Reckermann et al, 2022).…”

“…Knowledge gaps and research needs have been intensively discussed within the grand challenge working groups of Baltic Earth and are summarised by the BEARs (Lehmann et al, 2022;Kuliński et al, 2021;Rutgersson et al, 2022;Weisse et al, 2021;Christensen et al, 2022;Gröger et al, 2021a;Meier et al, 2022;Viitasalo and Bonsdorff, 2021;Reckermann et al, 2022).…”

“…Finally, the regional Earth system is driven by multiple drivers, of which climate change is just one. Multi-driver studies are just beginning to be made, and only a few have yet been published (Reckermann et al, 2022).…”