WP2: Food production

Lead: Sonja Salovius-Laurén

This workpackage seeks solutions to improve food production development in coastal areas (agriculture and fisheries). By engaging stakeholders, WP2 works towards sustainable practices with reduced nutrient enrichment to the sea.

The objectives of WP2 are to

1. Identify strategies and prerequisites for restoration of key habitat-forming macrophytes in fish nursery habitats to increase natural fish production.
2. Identify solutions to challenges in decision-making and monitoring of aquaculture practices.
3. Mitigate land runoff from agriculture through incentivising agricultural practices.

The work is structured under four specific tasks:

80% of coastal lagoons containing essential fish nursery habitats are heavily affected by human activities, such as tourism and recreation, traffic (e.g. leisure boats), dredging, and fishing. To increase natural fish production, it is important to safeguard and restore these coastal lagoons and key habitat-providing macrophytes. This task studies the prerequisites for restoring stonewort species (e.g. Chara spp.) as they facilitate fish recruitment by offering suitable habitats in coastal lagoons.

The work includes controlled tank-aquarium experiments to assess growth and impacts of heatwaves and sediment quality, restoration field experiments in coastal lagoons, observational studies of environmental characteristics to assess restoration potential, and population genetic diversity assessment of threatened stonewort species to understand reproduction strategies and provide effective restoration options. The expected outcomes include new knowledge on the ecology of stoneworths and their reproduction strategies for national restoration work (EU-level commitments) and thereby improved conditions for fish recruitment and production.

Contacts: Sonja Salovius-Laurén, Martin Snickars

This task revisits and broadens the identification of the problem and solution of aquaculture practices in a eutrophication hot-spot area from the decision-making and legislative permission perspective, particularly focusing on biodiversity impacts.

The work includes interviews and workshops with stakeholders (fish farmers, decision-makers, environmental monitoring institutions). The expected outcomes include suggestions for improved decision-making based on an overview of biodiversity impacts, as well as knowledge and argumentations included in aquaculture legislative permission processes and gaps in monitoring of biodiversity impacts.

Contacts: Anna Törnroos-Remes, Henrik Ringbom

This task identifies biodiversity effects of agricultural practices linked to nutrient runoff and mitigation efforts, such as chalk, buffer zones, changing farming practices, and other measures. It also explores and evaluates demand-driven (e.g. eco-labelling) and bottom-up approaches for incentivising agricultural practices that curb nutrition run-offs from farmland.

The work involves an action-oriented collaborative case study approach that combines ecological impact measurements and assessments with value chain analysis known from business and economics. Collaboration with voluntary farms, suppliers, and downstream actors in the food production value chain (e.g. local breweries, meat producers, bakeries) is an essential part of this task. The expected outcomes include concepts for using ecolabelling as a means for covering the costs for investing in agricultural practices that protect and safeguard marine biodiversity in novel ways.

Contacts: Magnus Hellström, Anna Törnroos-Remes

This task investigates solutions to previously identified wicked problems in coastal fisheries in the region linked to seal and bird predation and destruction on fish harvesting practices vis-à-vis species protection of predators.

Contact: Sonja Salovius-Laurén

People

Sonja Salovius-Laurén SOS WP2 Lead; University Researcher in Environmental and Marine Biology+358 46 921 6458sonja.salovius-lauren@abo.fiResearch profile
Magnus Hellström SOS WP3 Lead; Professor in the Laboratory of Industrial Management+358 40 737 9980magnus.hellstrom@abo.fiResearch profile
Roxana Preston Postdoctoral Researcher, SOS WP2; Project researcher, Biodiversea LIFE IProxana.preston@abo.fiResearch profile
Henrik Ringbom SOS WP4 Lead; Professor of Marine Law+358 50 463 3904henrik.ringbom@abo.fiResearch profile
Anna Törnroos-Remes SOS Director, Associate Professor of Environmental and Marine Biology (tenure track)+358 41 434 1741anna.m.tornroos@abo.fiResearch profile