News
This page contains latest news regarding the institute. Some entries are only available in German.
BRIESE Prize 2018: Focus ocean acidification – Great progress in Baltic Sea pH monitoring and more
Jens Daniel Müller from the IOW has been awarded this year's BRIESE Prize for Marine Research. The jury honours his research on the distinctive features of ocean acidification in marginal and coastal seas. Müller used the Baltic Sea as an example to show that acidification takes place under fundamentally different conditions there than it does in the open ocean. With the advancement of a high-precision optical pH measuring method, which until now could only be used at high oceanic salinities, but which now can also be applied in less salty water, he also created the basis for making pH changes in brackish water comparable worldwide.
Raising data treasures with ODIN 2 by easily surfing through over 60 years of Baltic Sea monitoring
This year, the first international agreement on joint monitoring of the Baltic Sea marine environment turns 50: As early as 1969, the riparian states for the first time carried out measurements along a coordinated station network as part of a so-called “Baltic Year”. The Warnemünde oceanographers have been involved ever since and are making a significant contribution to this valuable long-term data set. Their more than 70 million data, some of them even dating back to 1951, are now freely accessible and can be visualised user-friendly with the ODIN 2 research tool developed by the IOW: https://odin2.io-warnemuende.de.
Bad food?
How mesozooplankton reacts to blue-green algae blooms
A group of marine researchers around the IOW biologist Natalie Loick-Wilde has succeeded in deciphering the mysterious feeding behaviour of mesozooplankton in the presence of cyanobacterial blooms by analysing stable nitrogen isotopes in amino acids. They found that contradictory observations, according to which both the dominance of herbivorous and carnivorous diets occurred, can be explained by the aging process of a blue-green algal bloom. In view of an assumed future worldwide increase in such blooms, their findings open up new perspectives on potential developments within a key group of the marine food web.
» Read more … Bad food?
How mesozooplankton reacts to blue-green algae blooms
Model results: Baltic Sea could return to a good environmental status
In the largest model comparison ever carried out for the Baltic Sea region, an international team of authors led by Markus Meier, oceanographer from Warnemünde, came to the conclusion that a good status of the Baltic Sea environment can be achieved if the measures planned in the Baltic Sea Action Plan to reduce nutrient discharges are consistently implemented. They thus contradicted the view that climate change in general makes it impossible to achieve this goal. At the same time, however, they confirmed that climate change would lead to an increase in eutrophication if the nutrient load remains high.
» Read more … Model results: Baltic Sea could return to a good environmental status
Is climate change a threat to marine ecosystems in the Benguela upwelling system? New project kicks off
The three-year research project EVAR to investigate possible climate change impacts on key biogeochemical processes in the Benguela upwelling system off South West Africa, a very important fishing ground, was launched on January 2, 2019. The project is funded by the German Ministry of Research with about 3 Mill. euros and is headed by the IOW. Scientists from the MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Sciences at Bremen University and the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel are also participating, together with their colleagues from the University of Namibia and the National Marine Information and Research Centre NatMIRC.
Contact persons in all matters of press and public relation at the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research are
Dr. Kristin Beck
Tel.: 0381 5197 135
E-Mail: kristin.beck@io-warnemuende.de
Dr. Barbara Hentzsch
Tel.: 0381 5197 102
E-Mail: barbara.hentzsch@io-warnemuende.de
Satellite image of the month
read more in >> satellite images