Human activities result in many threats to the Baltic marine environment. Research into these threats is motivated by the urgent need to understand and predict the impacts of our activities in the marine environment, and duly control them. The state of the marine environment will then indicate how successful such efforts have been.
The Baltic Sea Action Plan, prepared by the Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission (HELCOM), identifies specific major environmental threats to the Baltic Sea including eutrophication, hazardous and toxic substances, threats facing marine biodiversity, and risks caused by increasingly intense ship traffic. Climate change is also seen as a further factor expected to have far-reaching effects on the marine environment.
This section of the portal examines the research conducted in Finland into the impacts of eutrophication, climate change and hazardous substances on the Baltic Sea.
Research into marine biodiversity is presented in the portal’s Structures and functions section. Research related to shipping is described in the section Socio-economic research.
