Separate and interactive effects of eutrophication and climate variables on the ecosystem elements of the Gulf of Riga

Kotta, Jonne; Kotta, Ilmar; Simm, Mart; Põllupüü, Maria

doi:10.1016/j.ecss.2009.07.014

Cited by 49 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…Knowledge on the relative importance of all these interacting processes on benthic communities is only just starting to emerge [14][15][16][17][18]. These studies confirm that the degree of interaction between different pressures is not consistent but varies across sites or species [19].…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 63%

Role of physical water properties and environmental disturbances on the diversity of coastal macrophyte and invertebrate communities in a brackish water ecosystem

Kotta

Orav‐Kotta

Pärnoja

2013

WIT Transactions on Ecology and the Environment

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Biodiversity is important in maintaining ecosystem viability and the knowledge on how biodiversity is regulated and maintained is a prerequisite for the sustainable management of natural resources. Using three different diversity indices (macrozoobenthos community index, number of functional traits, community heterogeneity), we evaluated the role of physical water properties (water temperature, salinity, and velocity), coastal topography (depth and coastal slope), ice scouring (ice cover and duration) and eutrophication (water transparency, phytoplankton biomass) on benthic macrophyte and invertebrate communities in a brackish water ecosystem of the Baltic Sea. The analyses were performed at multiple spatial scales in order to identify scale-dependent relationships between the environment and biota as well as to promote our understanding of the patterns of macroalgal and invertebrate diversity in the coastal seascapes. The studied indices responded well to the changes in ambient environment and the links between environmental variables and indices were always the strongest at 5 km spatial scale. In general ice conditions, coastal topography and eutrophication had the strongest and physical water properties had the weakest effect to the studied indices. The eutrophication induced effects were the strongest at seascape scales and these are the scales at which the impacts of eutrophication on coastal biota should be assessed.

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 63%

Role of physical water properties and environmental disturbances on the diversity of coastal macrophyte and invertebrate communities in a brackish water ecosystem

Kotta

Orav‐Kotta

Pärnoja

2013

WIT Transactions on Ecology and the Environment

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“…A thorough description of sampling approaches and techniques is given in [21,22]. Multivariate data analyses were performed by the statistical program "PRIMER" version 6.1.5 [23].…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bayesian inference for predicting ecological water quality under different climate change scenarios

Kotta

Aps

Orav‐Kotta

2009

WIT Transactions on Ecology and the Environment

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The aim of this paper is to assess the separate and interactive effects of eutrophication and climate variables on the sea water quality in Pärnu Bay (the Gulf of Riga, Baltic Sea) using multivariate statistical analyses and the Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) methodology. The assessment was based on the following biological quality elements: phytoplankton, submerged aquatic vegetation and benthic invertebrates. The multivariate statistical analyses suggest that zoobenthos communities are largely driven by weather conditions (i.e. climate variables), phytoplankton by nutrient loads while the dynamics of macrophyte communities was due to the combined effect of weather and nutrient loads. The BBN constructed for this study represents uncertainty in ecological water quality assessment. Probabilistic modeling shows that phytoplankton and zoobenthos are not sensitive to climate change impacts while phytobenthos would suffer from decrease in sea water salinity. Under climate change, therefore, phytobenthos is one of the key variables in determining the water quality in the study area.

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“…Since the 1990s, surface layers are also observed to have warmed near the Lithuanian coast (Dailidiené et al 2011), recently at 0.3-0.9°C per decade. The changes are more complex in the Gulf of Finland (Liblik and Lips 2011) and in the Gulf of Riga (Kotta et al 2009); these studies stress the relation of temperature variations to the atmospheric circulation patterns expressed as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO, see Chap. 4, Box 4.1) and/or the Baltic Sea Index (BSI, difference of sea-level air pressure anomalies between Oslo and Szczecin, Lehmann et al 2002) indices (e.g.…”

Section: Trends and Variations In Water Temperaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Recent Change—Marine Circulation and Stratification

Elken

Lehmann

Myrberg

2015

Regional Climate Studies

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This chapter describes recent change in the circulation and stratification of the Baltic Sea. A recent warming trend in sea-surface waters has been clearly demonstrated by in situ measurements, remote sensing data and numerical models. Trends in sea-surface temperature (SST) for the past three to four decades based on remote sensing data generally agree with trends determined from in situ observations. Models suggest the current warming within the Baltic Sea lies within the range experienced during the past 500 years. The salinity and stratification of the deep waters are strongly linked to the major inflows of North Sea water that occur sporadically and bring high-saline water into the deep layers of the Baltic Sea. The major inflows normally occur during winter and spring and bring cold oxygen-rich waters into the deep basins. Since 1996, large inflows have also occurred during summer, bringing in warm low-oxygen water. IntroductionChanges in thermohaline characteristics and stratification of the water column are usually analysed on the basis of data from repeat hydrographic observations, originating from shipborne monitoring programmes and/or permanent coastal and offshore oceanographic stations. Such datasets are described in recent books by Feistel et al. (2008) and Leppäranta and Myrberg (2009). In situ observations are often irregular in space and time, especially for offshore areas; therefore, trends and variability in the ocean state can only be determined by careful pre-processing of the data to address issues such as data homogenisation and the suppression of aliasing errors. In recent decades, horizontal undersampling by in situ measurements has been partially offset by the remote sensing of sea-surface properties from satellites; with these data free of spatial aliasing errors due to their high horizontal resolution. Satellite-derived cloud-free products for sea-surface temperature (SST) have been reasonably accurate since the 1980s. Many of the papers published over the past decade that address trends and variability in the circulation and stratification of the Baltic Sea are based on remote sensing data, often in combination with in situ observations and the results of numerical modelling. Improvements in the physical and numerical features of the models, accompanied by model validation studies, have increased confidence in the realism of the model results. Models provide dynamically balanced gridded datasets over decades or longer, including information for 'noisy' variables such as currents, transport and mixing fluxes. This chapter analyses the recent peer-reviewed literature, extending the findings from earlier review (Box 7.1).

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Separate and interactive effects of eutrophication and climate variables on the ecosystem elements of the Gulf of Riga

Cited by 49 publications

References 44 publications

Role of physical water properties and environmental disturbances on the diversity of coastal macrophyte and invertebrate communities in a brackish water ecosystem

Role of physical water properties and environmental disturbances on the diversity of coastal macrophyte and invertebrate communities in a brackish water ecosystem

Bayesian inference for predicting ecological water quality under different climate change scenarios

Recent Change—Marine Circulation and Stratification

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