Ny publikation om miljöeffekter på planktonalger i Finska viken

Jonna Engström-Öst och Andreas Lindén, forskare i bioekonomi vid Yrkeshögskolan Novia, har tillsammans med Louise Forsblom (Åbo Akademi), Sirpa Lehtinen (SYKE) och Inga Lips (Tallinn University of Technology) skrivit en artikel som publicerats i Journal of Plankton Research.Artikeln, Environmental variables driving species and genus level changes in annual plankton biomass, handlar om hur miljövariabler (temperatur, salthalt, skiktning, oorganiska näringsämnen, samt is) påverkar den årliga biomassan hos planktonarter och -släkten i Finska viken under tidsperioden 1993–2016.

Louise Forsblom, Jonna Engström-Öst, Sirpa Lehtinen, Inga Lips & Andreas Lindén (2019) Environmental variables driving species and genus level changes in annual plankton biomass. Journal of Plankton Research 41: 925-938

Sammanfattning på engelska:
Abiotic variables subject to global change are known to affect plankton biomasses, and these effects can be species specific. Here, we investigate the environmental drivers of annual biomass using plankton data from the Gulf of Finland in the northern Baltic Sea, spanning years 1993–2016. We estimated annual biomass time-series of 31 nanoplankton and microplankton species and genera from day-level data, accounting for the average phenology and wind. We found wind effects on day-level biomass in 16 taxa. We subsequently used state-space models to connect the annual biomass changes with potential environmental drivers (temperature, salinity, stratification, ice cover and inorganic nutrients), simultaneously accounting for temporal trends. We found clear environmental effects influencing the annual biomasses of Dinobryon faculiferum, Eutreptiella spp., Protoperidinium bipes, Pseudopedinella spp., Snowella spp. and Thalassiosira baltica and indicative effects in 10 additional taxa. These effects mostly concerned temperature, salinity or stratification. Together, these 16 taxa represent two-thirds of the summer biomass in the sampled community. The inter-annual variability observed in salinity and temperature is relatively low compared to scenarios of predicted change in these variables. Therefore, the potential impacts of the presented effects on plankton biomasses are considerable.

Bild: Sanna Suikkanen Finlands Miljöcentral