Aftermath
Thanks for a great Workshop!
Climate change and other drivers affect the observed changes in the environment of the Baltic Sea region. A clear allocation of single causes is difficult due to the interlinkages between the different drivers. This workshop in Tallinn was intended to bring together experts in the different fields of Earth system research and discuss the state of science and possible ways to solve this problem.
We are happy that so many experts form the different research fields followed our invitation and found the time to come to Tallinn to speak at the workshop. We thank BONUS, HELCOM and ICES for helping in preparing the workshop and finding speakers, and TalTech for organizing the event together with the International Baltic Earth Secretariat at Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht.
With more than 110 participants attending, the participation was overwhelming. Next to the 31 oral presentations, we had 32 posters, and a high number of young scientists from all over the Baltic Sea region. This, and the open and curious spirit at the workshop showed that the topic is of high interest to many scientists, and is also on the agenda of decision makers and needs to be taken up. The bottom line of the presentations and following discussions was that we do know quite a lot about the individual drivers, but much less about their interlinkages and their dependencies on climate change. Regional change is caused by many factors, of which the changing climate is an overarching one, affecting many other factors. The anthropogenic drivers have been mostly identified, and many research projects have been working on these (many under the BONUS flag), but the interdependencies between the different drivers have not yet been treated intensively. These interlinkages are where the unknowns are and there have not been many studies to tackle this problem.
It was encouraging to see the open attitude of researchers working in the different research areas to collaborate in the future. A concrete outcome of the workshop is the intention to write an assessment report on this topic, to be published in the Baltic Earth Assessment Report series (BEAR). Presenters at the workshop agreed to contribute as co-authors this assessment, so that we can expect a good team of experts for the task. The paper should give an overview over what we know and, more importantly, what we do not know, and how can we can proceed in future research activities towards disentangling the interlinkages of the multiple drivers, wherever possible and useful to improve management options.
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