Ecosystem-level comparative study of the impacts of environmental changes on biotic communities and food webs in Lapland and the Baltic Sea

Project partner: The Biodiversity Unit of University of Turku

Project leader: Dr. Jari Hänninen

Research questions:

The Baltic Sea Aquatic Ecosystem:

• How have climate change and Regime shifts in the marine ecosystem affected the phytoplankton and zooplankton communities in the Archipelago Sea?
• Has the decline in zooplankton biomass since the 1970s affected the success of herring at the individual level, i.e. the fitness of herring, through reduced nutrient intake by juvenile herring?
• Is the earlier onset of ice and the reduction/absence of spring floods reflected in the phytoplankton bloom peaks in the Archipelago Sea and further in the life cycles of zooplankton and herring, in particular in the timing of reproduction?
• Have changes in nitrogen and phosphorus deposition due to increased winter precipitation had an impact on the life cycles of phytoplankton, zooplankton and herring in the Archipelago Sea?
• How has the synchrony between predators and prey organisms changed in the Baltic Sea as a result of climate change by altering the timing of phytoplankton blooms and zooplankton reproductive peaks (phenological mismatch)?

Subarctic Terrestrial ecosystem:

• What population trends are discernible in different trait-based groups of subarctic moths? How are they affected by climate change, especially represented by large-scale oceanic climate patterns, such as the NAO and Baltic Regime shifts?
• Has the developement of moth populations in the northern boreal forest zone of Lapland in Värriö been similar for different insect guilds to that in the subarctic fells in Kevo?
• Is the impact of the Regime shifts observed in the Baltic Sea as pronounced in the more continental Värriö as on Kevo near the Arctic Ocean?
• Are the changes in species composition in the moth community reflected in the populations of insectivorous birds that feed on caterpillars, and is there a mismatch between the peaks in the abundance of butterfly and bird populations?  In particular, we want to investigate the situation of threatened passerine bird species

Inter-ecosystem synthesis:

• Has the synchrony between predators and prey species changed due to climate change in marine and terrestrial ecosystems? Are the changes in different ecosystems comparable?
• Are there similar causal relationships in the success of plankton and planktivorous fish and moth and insectivorous birds as a result of climate change?