Our objective is to understand the effectiveness of local and international nutrient pollution mitigation efforts when targeting better water quality in the region's coastal waters. To this end, we developed an integrated modeling framework for the Archipelago Sea located in the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe, conducted what-if analyses for various ambition levels of nutrient abatement, and studied the long-term consequences at the sea basin scale. We demonstrate that in outer parts of the Archipelago Sea, a good eutrophication status can be achieved if the current internationally agreed policy goals for nutrient abatement are successfully met.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis paper introduces a framework for extending global climate and socioeconomic scenarios in order to study agricultural nutrient pollution on an individual catchment scale. Our framework builds on and extends Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) and Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) at the spatial and temporal scales that are relevant for the drivers of animal husbandry, manure recycling and the application of inorganic fertilisers in crop production. Our case study area is the Aura river catchment in South-West Finland, which discharges into the heavily eutrophic Baltic Sea.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe worldwide economic downturn and the climate change in the beginning of 21st century have stressed the need for cost efficient and systematic operations model for the monitoring and management of surface waters. However, these processes are still all too fragmented and incapable to respond these challenges. For example in Finland, the estimation of the costs and benefits of planned management measures is insufficient.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFClimate change is expected to increase annual and especially winter runoff, shorten the snow cover period and therefore increase both nutrient leaching from agricultural areas and natural background leaching in the Baltic Sea catchment. We estimated the effects of climate change and possible future scenarios of agricultural changes on the phosphorus and nitrogen loading to the Baltic Sea from Finnish catchments. In the agricultural scenarios we assumed that the prices of agricultural products are among the primary drivers in the adaptation to climate change, as they affect the level of fertilization and the production intensity and volume and, hence, the modeled changes in gross nutrient loading from agricultural land.
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