CCB NEWSLETTER No

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1 CCB NEWSLETTER No This or that? Every day is the first day in the rest of the future. This means that the future depends on how you spend this very day. You may think that it doesn t count much in the Baltic household budget whether you do this or that but if this makes just a tiny bit more sustainable sense than that, then this is really way ahead of that. CCB is built on the conception that this is more important than that. You always have a choice. You constantly make decisions based on choice. You cannot escape the responsibility based on your decisions. This is more important than that. One thing is more important than another. The vulnerable balance in the blue and green environments of the Baltic Sea and its catchment areas is more important than maximum economic growth. The protection of dunes along the coast is more important than the avoidance of sand storms. CCB is not against the use of sea and land for production purposes, but CCB will never accept misuse and exploitation in order to increase any kind of production. In other words we welcome any initiative which can combine environment and production in a sustainable balance and we will be more than willing to spread the word. Henrik Butze, Editor of the CCB Newsletter In this issue: 1 Coalition Clean Baltic future directions 2 New faces at the CCB Secretariat in Uppsala 3 Getting to the problem of the hypoxia problem of the Baltic Sea 6 Study tour on sustainable sanitation Coalition Clean Baltic future directions The Baltic Sea region has been through major changes during the last years, and consequently, so has Coalition Clean Baltic. Due to the enlargement of the European Union eight of the nine countries surrounding the Baltic Sea are now EU members. This gives new possibility for more coherent work on different policy areas and new financial opportunities, even though others are lost. At the same time, it is vital for CCB to be a network of members all around the region. We are happy to welcome organisations from Ukraine and Belarus to the CCB family. From the very beginning, the aim of CCB was to strengthen the civil

2 society. This work continues on new frontiers. The Baltic Sea is high on the political agenda. The Helsinki commission HELCOM is in the implementation phase of their Baltic Sea Action Plan. The EU strategy for the Baltic Sea will hopefully be accepted during autumn 2009, during the Swedish EU presidency. To follow up and contribute to these processes will be an important task for CCB. However, the core of CCB is still the same; to be a platform for exchanging information and ideas between our members. Here lays our strongest asset. Lotta Nummelin, CCB Chair New faces at the CCB Secretariat in Uppsala This summer Michael Druitt, from Australia, started working as a project employee at the CCB Secretariat in Uppsala, Sweden. During the autumn he will perform a project on Natura 2000 areas for protection of Baltic salmon. Michael is a marine scientist with experience in research, consultancy and education in environmental sustainability. Before moving to Sweden Michael worked as a sustainability coordinator at Hunter s Hill Council in Sydney, Australia. From September Nils Höglund will work as new Fisheries Policy Officer with CCB. Since 2003 he has been working for the Swedish Anglers Association. Before that Nils worked for the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation and the Swedish Ministry for Environment. Nils has as Master of Social Science with a major in Political Science, combined with environmental and development studies and studies in environmental law. We are very happy to welcome our two new colleagues to the CCB Secretariat and the CCB network. 2

3 Getting to the bottom of the hypoxia problem in the Baltic Sea The Baltic Sea is in a very sad state. There may be some signs of improvement at the surface, but vast areas of the deeper bottoms in the open Baltic Sea are currently hypoxic (low oxygen concentration) or anoxic (no oxygen), with no macroscopic benthic life. If things were right, there should be lots of clams, worms and crustaceans everywhere in the sand and mud! Sampling of long sediment cores (Photo J. Norkko). Hypoxia has been present in the Baltic Sea from time to time ever since the formation of the modern Baltic about 8000 years ago. The natural hypoxia is a result of the unique morphology of the Baltic: The rare inflows of saltier water through the narrow Danish Sounds bring more oxygenated water into the Baltic, but at the same time they make the water column more stratified, with heavier, saltier water on the bottom and fresher water on the top. This means that oxygen from the surface waters cannot easily be mixed into the deeper waters and over time the oxygen conditions get worse in the deep. It is clear, however, that both the spatial extent and the severity of hypoxia have increased due to humaninduced eutrophication. Increased nutrient input increases primary production, which we can see as large algal blooms at the surface, and as the increasing amounts of algae sink to the bottom and decompose, more and more oxygen is consumed in the deeper parts of the sea. Consequently, hypoxia (oxygen < 2 ml / L) is currently the main environmental factor stressing the benthic communities in the deeper areas of the Baltic (see map of hypoxic areas below). 3

4 Extent of seasonal hypoxia (red) and longer-term hypoxia (black) during (Philip Axe / HELCOM, 2009: Eutrophication in the Baltic Sea An integrated thematic assessment of the effects of nutrient enrichment and eutrophication in the Baltic Sea region. Balt. Sea Environ. Proc. No. 115B.) It is known that benthic invertebrates such as clams, worms and crustaceans mix and oxygenate the sediment, which has a positive effect on the sediment s capacity to bind, for example, phosphorous. They also facilitate the mineralization of organic material and thus function as nature s own sewage treatment plants and can counteract the internal nutrient loading from the sediments. The internal loading can be described as a vicious circle: When organic material from algal blooms sink to the bottom, it consumes oxygen while being decomposed. The near-bottom water may therefore become hypoxic, which leads to phosphorous being released from the sediment. This phosphorous may then fuel even stronger cyanobacterial blooms and when they sink to the bottom and consume oxygen and release even more phosphorous, the vicious circle is in full swing. Benthic invertebrates are also important food sources for several species of fish, including young cod. Conversely, when the animals are missing, these positive effects are also lost. We know that there has been hypoxia in the past, we know that nutrients can be either buried in or released from the sediments, and we know that benthic animals have the potential to affect these processes. Nevertheless, we do not have a good understanding of how these processes are linked and how they differ between different areas of the Baltic Sea. This was the motivation for starting the interdisciplinary research project HYPER (HYPoxia mitigation for Baltic Sea Ecosystem Restoration), funded by the BONUS research programme. In May-June 2009 a team of scientists participated in an almost four week long research cruise onboard the Finnish research vessel Aranda. The cruise started from Helsinki and covered all the main sea areas of the Baltic, from the Arkona and Bornholm basins in the south to the Bothnian Bay in the north. A total of 85 monitoring stations were visited. The purpose of the research cruise was both to continue the annual monitoring of benthic fauna and to start the HYPER project to investigate how much of the hypoxia in the Baltic Sea is natural and 4

5 how much is caused by anthropogenic eutrophication. The research vessel Aranda (Photo A. Norkko). Since the benthic fauna is relatively long-lived and sedentary, it reflects environmental conditions and changes very well and is therefore a good target for monitoring. The Finnish annual monitoring of the benthic fauna of the open Baltic Sea started in At the monitoring stations sediment grab samples are taken, sieved and preserved onboard, and the animals are later identified to species and counted under the microscope in the laboratory. At these stations measurements of water column oxygen, salinity and nutrients are also made. The results of the monitoring are reported to HELCOM and form an important baseline for, for example, the recent HELCOM thematic assessment of eutrophication. The results from the cruise this year showed that the oxygen conditions in the Åland Sea and in the Gulf of Bothnia were still good and the benthic fauna was healthy. However, like in previous years, the oxygen conditions in the Baltic proper were very poor and below around 90 meters depth, there was no oxygen and no macroscopic life, and in most of the deeper areas there was toxic hydrogen sulphide in the bottom water. The HYPER team consisted of an international group of geologists, sediment chemists and benthic ecologists. The sediment chemists studied how nitrogen and phosphorous are buried or released from the sediment, while the ecologists investigated how the benthic fauna affects fluxes of nutrients in or out of the sediment. The geologists took long cores, over 5 meters into the sediment, from different parts of the Baltic in order to analyse the extent of hypoxia under different periods in the development of the Baltic Sea. The sediment layers in the deepest parts of the Baltic accumulate like growth rings in trees; they can tell us about past environmental conditions, several thousand years back in time. Layers of clearly laminated (layered) sediments indicate that there have been periods of hypoxia with no fauna, while homogenised, mixed sediments indicate periods of good oxygen conditions, with fauna that has bioturbated (mixed) the sediments. Chamber incubations to measure nutrient and oxygen fluxes in and out of the sediment (Photo J. Norkko). 5

6 It will take a couple of years to analyse and synthesise all the data collected during the research cruise, but already the initial results indicate that the interactions between benthic animals and sediment chemistry are complex and highly variable both between subbasin in the Baltic and between hypoxic and normoxic areas within the same basin. The cruise was a success and the combined data is likely to provide very important new insights into how the hypoxia in the Baltic Sea works and, hopefully, this information will be welcomed by decision makers and used for better management of nutrient loadings into the Baltic Sea. More information about the research vessel Aranda, the HYPER project and the BONUS research programme can be found at: atkat/en_gb/2009/ Joanna Norkko Finnish Society for Nature & Environment, CCB board member Scientist at the Marine Research Centre, Finnish Environment Institute STUDY TOUR on sustainable sanitation From June 2009 a group of 22 Polish and Ukrainian representatives of NGOs (Polish Ecological Club and World Lab), scientists and farmers visited several places in the Uppsala and Stockholm regions, together with five Japanese scientists, to see and study sustainable sanitation solutions: wastewater systems with source separating and recycling of nutrients and nature based treatment. The CCB Secretariat organized in cooperation with WRS (Water Revival Systems) consulting specialists this 3 days trip to some of the most significant Swedish implemented projects, including an introduction seminar and several environmentally sound municipalities and places: Lagga, Nynäs, Hedebyskolan, Trosa, Järna, Understenshöjden, Nyckelviken, Velamsund and Gebers. Blackwater system at Trostorp The visitors could follow both sophisticated installations of methane utilization and a simple and effective method of open sand filters in small villages. The participants could watch vegetables and green loan in private garden fertilized by urine and composted faeces, as well as municipal nurseries installation and experimental beds of flowers. 6

7 Methane utilization system at Nynäs eco- farm In the garden of Prof. H.Jönsson, Equipment for spreading urine in the garden. High standards for nutrients removal was presented in Trosa wetlands and Jarna ponds system as the examples of an effective and environmental friendly land use. Dry urine diverting toilets installations was observed at permanent exhibition of Velamsund education centre as well as public school and housing projects of ecovillages. Trosa wetlands, outlet to the ditch Anna Smolka, CCB Water Policy Officer Urine separating toilets at Hedebyskolan, Vagnhärad Systems of storage of urine and black water were presented in several places. The experiences from the study tour will be adopted and used e.g. for the educational project Sustainable sanitation in rural areas of Upper Vistula basin carried out by PKE with financial support of Norwegian Financial Mechanism and the Ukrainian project of Urine diverting toilets for school. 7