First Steps towards a near Real-Time Modelling System of in the Baltic Sea.

Over the last two decades, infections have emerged as an increasingly serious public health threat along the German Baltic coast. To manage related risks, near real-time (NRT) modelling of quantities has often been proposed. Such models require spatially explicit input data, for example, from remote sensing or numerical model products.

Author Correction: Tracing microplastics in aquatic environments based on sediment analogies.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Tracing microplastics in aquatic environments based on sediment analogies.

Microplastics (MP) data collection from the aquatic environment is a challenging endeavour that sets apparent limitations to regional and global MP quantification. Expensive data collection causes small sample sizes and oftentimes existing data sets are compared without accounting for natural variability due to hydrodynamic processes governing the distribution of particles. In Warnow estuarine sediments (Germany) we found significant correlations between high-density polymer size fractions (≥500 mm) and sediment grain size.

Long term development of Bathing Water Quality at the German Baltic coast: spatial patterns, problems and model simulations.

Bathing water quality plays a key role for public health, is highly important for recreational tourism and therefore monitored in the EU-Directive 2006/7/EC. To identify pollution hot spots, sources and impacts of the directive-change in 2006, including a change of indicator organisms, we evaluated monitoring data of the past 15 years, collected own data, determined survival rates of indicator organisms and applied hydrodynamic modelling in a micro-tidal-system. Due to higher survival rates under turbid conditions and restricted water exchange, shallow, eutrophic bays and lagoons are hot spots of microbial pollution.