Project: Baltic Sea Multilevel Health impacts on Key species of Anthropogenic Hazardous Substances

Acronym BALTHEALTH (Reference Number: call2015-19)
Duration 01/04/2017 - 31/03/2020
Project Topic The Baltic serves as a unique model ecosystem in which top predators can provide early warnings for ecosystem health. Over the last century the Baltic food web has been severely impacted by hazardous substances, hunting, fisheries and eutrophication. The main focus of the proposed project BaltHealth is therefore to investigate spatial and temporal trends in multilevel food web impacts of chemical substances, climate change, zoonotic diseases, and their interactions. The consortium, representing four BONUS countries, provides a unique synergism of extensive ecological, toxicological and veterinary expertise. The consortium has access to state of the art facilities and techniques, as well as decades of acquired samples and data, which will be used to develop novel indicators of animal health and good ecological status. Once having defined food web interactions between key ecological and commercial species, separate work packages will investigate food web dynamics of energy and hazardous substances, linkages to pathological, immune and endocrine effect biomarkers, as well as important infectious and zoonotic diseases. All data will feed into an integrated model of health effects of multiple stressors on the Baltic food web. The BaltHealth outcome will furthermore provide novel knowledge for risk assessment by Baltic stakeholders, including HELCOM, ICES, OSPAR and ASCOBANS, and will have large impact through education, public media and the participating national history museums.
Network BONUS
Call Bonus Call 2015: Blue Baltic

Project partner

Number Name Role Country
1 Aarhus University Coordinator Denmark
2 University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover Partner Germany
3 Maritimas AB Partner Sweden
4 University of Copenhagen Partner Denmark
5 Stockholm University Partner Sweden
6 University of Gothenburg Partner Sweden
7 University of Turku Partner Finland
8 Umea University Partner Sweden
9 Swedish Museum of Natural History Partner Sweden
10 Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke) Partner Finland
11 Umweltbundesamt Partner Germany
12 Norwegian Institute of Nature Research Partner Norway
13 University of Antwerp Partner Belgium
14 Carleton University Partner Canada
15 University of Connecticut Partner United States
16 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Partner United States