I investigate the pelagic environmental situation of the Gulf of Bothnia. I am also Deputy Director for Umeå Marine Sciences Centre.
I am the project leader for a number of projects that we perform on behalf of different environmental authorities in Sweden, for example the Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management and several county boards. The most extensive project I lead concerns the hydrography, chemistry and biology of the pelagic environment in the Gulf of Bothnia, and is a part of the Swedish national environmental monitoring programme.
The Gulf of Bothnia is an interesting area with its low salinities, high runoff from land and ice cover during winter. These characteristics also give us challenges when it comes to sampling as well as analysing the results. The results are important not only for understanding the environmental situation in the Gulf of Bothnia but they are also relevant for other areas such as the Arctic as the environmental situation and the forecast with a changing climate is in many ways similar. The project generates valuable time series dating back to the beginning of the 1990ties.As a marine environmental analyst I investigate these time series in order to find trends and correlations between different variables.
The taxonomy of phytoplankton is my special interest. I am the member of the HELCOM Phytoplankton Expert Group since 2003. This group works to ensure and maintain a high quality of the phytoplankton monitoring in the Baltic area and consist of experts from all countries around the Baltic Sea. In 2012 I took my doctors degree at the University of Tromsö on chemical taxonomy of diatoms.