Nutrient cocktails in coastal zones of the Baltic Sea (COCOA) (39145)

The overall objective of COCOA is to identify the major pathways of nutrients and organic material (simply referred to as nutrients in the following) across the diversity of coastal ecosystems and assess management implications.

Specifically, COCOA will investigate four different types of coastal ecosystems: 1) river- dominated estuaries, 2) lagoons, 3) archipelagos, and 4) embayments with restricted water exchange to:
- Understand the changing nutrient (C/N/P/Si) cocktail across the land-sea continuum.
- Quantify processes that transform and accumulate nutrients.
- Estimate nutrient retention across coastal ecosystems.
- Investigate potential feed-back processes sustaining alternative stable states.
- Analyse how these process rates may have changed over time.
- Evaluate consequences of altered nutrient pathways on ecosystem services
- Identify possible management responses for present and future projections. 

Partners
National Institute of Aquatic Resources, DTU Aqua
Aarhus University, Denmark (coordinator)
Lund University, Sweden
Åbo Academi University, Finland
Stockholm University, Sweden
University of Gdansk, Poland
Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia
Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, Sweden
Coastal Research and Planning Institute, Lithuania
Helsinki University, Finland
Finnish Environment Institute, Finland
Utrecht University, Netherlands
University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Leibniz-Institute for Baltic Sea Research, Germany 

Funding
The project is funded EU; BONUS (Science for a Better Future of the Baltic Sea Region), ERA-NET.

Research area: Oceanography