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Project: Methane in Baltic Sea sediments – a silent threat!

Large quantities of methane are produced at the bottom of the Baltic Sea and may escape to bottom waters if not consumed by microbes in the sediment. The objective of this project is to produce new knowledge to help understanding methane generation and transfer from sediments to the water, and its possible short- and long-term impacts for the Baltic Sea (e.g., contribution to anoxia and acidification that will ultimately impact wildlife and human activities in the region).

Project information

Project manager
Marcelo Ketzer
Other project members
Christian Stranne, Stockholm University
Participating organizations
Linnaeus University; Stockholm University
Financier
Carl Tryggers Stiftelse
Timetable
1 Jan 2023–31 Dec 2024
Subject
Environmental Science (Department of Biology and Environmental Science, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences)

More about the project

The Baltic Sea has enormous economic and social values for its surrounding countries and is still one of the most polluted seas in the world. Eutrophication is among the major problems and leads to development of large areas with no oxygen in the water, or dead zones, where no aerobic benthic forms can live. Without oxygen, high quantities of organic matter also accumulate on the seafloor, fuelling biogeochemical reactions that produce methane. Methane diffuses upwards in sediments and eventually reaches bottom waters, aggravating oxygen depletion and acidification, expanding dead zones, and potentially reaching the atmosphere.

It is important to note that methane formation will not stop even if eutrophication is mitigated, and methane will likely be released for centuries or millennia. Neglecting this fact implies that we consciously leave a sad legacy, not to say, a silent threat for next generations. We propose, therefore, to execute a project comprising offshore fieldwork, sophisticated lab analyses and numerical modelling to fill in an existing knowledge gap and significantly improve the understanding of methane generation and transfer from sediments to the water, and its possible short- and long-term impacts for the Baltic Sea.

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