My research area focuses on how climate change induced stressors affect the food web quality and efficiency in the northern Baltic Sea.
The climate change-induced increases in temperature and precipitation in northern Europe are projected to enhance inflows of freshwater and associated terrestrial organic matter and nutrients from catchments to the sea, which potentially affect the production of marine basal organisms such as phytoplankton and bacteria, and their trophic support for the predators (e.g. fish) and the entire marine food web. Increasing temperature, inputs of terrestrial organic matter and nutrients may also affect the food web quality (i.e. in terns of fatty acid compositions of the organisms) and the energy transfer between trophic levels.
Therefore, my project focuses on assessing to what extent the climate change-induced stressors may affect the food web quality and efficiency in the Baltic Sea. I will carry out mesocosm studies, offshore and coastal field surveys, and analysis of long-term monitoring data of the Baltic sea. Results of these studies will provide insights into how the marine food web quality and efficiency respond to the environmental stressors, which in turn may enable ecological projections due to climate change.