Balticsea 2020

Eutrophication: Old sins also need dealing with to save the Baltic Sea faster

 
Should all our resources be used to reduce nutrient input into the Baltic Sea, or should we employ some of them in carrying out and evaluating measures to bind nutrients that have already gone in?

Professor Daniel Conley writes in a debate article in Nature (486; 463-464) that resources should be concentrated on reducing further input of nutrients into the Baltic Sea (e.g., from agriculture), and that we should not use engineering techniques in our inland sea to bind the redundant phosphorus that has already gone into it. As an example, Conley mentions oxygenation of bottom water or input of phosphorus-binding substances, as exemplified by BalticSea2020’s coastal zone project Living Coast, in which phosphorus will be bound with an aluminium treatment to increase the phosphorus binding capacity of the bottom sediments and prevent it from contributing to eutrophication.
We at BalticSea2020 believe of course that it is entirely right to reduce nutrient input into the Baltic Sea, but our answer to Professor Conley (Nature 487; 432) is that it will take the Baltic Sea a very long time to recover even if we succeed to reduce the inputs of nutrients. Therefore it is important to demonstrate – eg in restrained coastal areas, that it is possible to adjust problems of eutrophication. One good reason for doing so is to help maintain the political will to reduce nutrient input from the land into the Baltic Sea over several decades.

Source:

Nature
No. 486, p.463–464; June 2012
Nature
No. 487, 432; July 2012