Congratulations to the 2025 grant holders!
For the fourth year in a row, BalticWaters is awarding grants to early-career researchers. This year, two researchers are granted support - one natural scientist and one social scientist. Both projects have the potential to contribute to a living Baltic Sea by increasing knowledge about our salmon populations and facilitating the establishment of marine protected areas.
Historical genomics of salmon in the Gulf of Bothnia
Alexandra Rouillard, postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Ecology, Environment and Earth Sciences, Umeå University
Salmon populations in the Baltic Sea return to Swedish rivers to breed and are sensitive to changes in water quality. The project will investigate changes in salmon populations in the Gulf of Bothnia from the mid-19th century to the present, by analysing e-DNA in sediments. By linking this to historical measurements of water flows and water quality, we can determine how salmon populations and other parts of the food web have been affected by changes in water quality caused by, for example, land use and climate change. The results can be used to assess the quality of habitats in the different rivers, thereby providing a basis for setting conservation and release targets for salmon stocks across the Baltic Sea.
Protect Baltic – Developing the application of legal tools for marine protected areas in the Baltic Sea
Niels Krabbe,researcher at the Department of Law, University of Gothenburg.
Marine protected areas are crucial tools for reducing environmental impacts in biologically valuable and sensitive areas. However, the establishment of marine protected areas has been hindered by uncertainty about the legal prerequisites for introducing binding environmental regulations in different parts of the sea. Through a legal argumentation in favour of a more dynamic application of existing legislation at different levels of regulation and in different maritime zones, the project proposes strategies to remove these obstacles. The project thus aims to clarify the conditions and propose the application of regulations that facilitate the establishment of effective marine protected areas. The project's proposals will be presented to the Baltic Sea regional cooperation HELCOM and its partners.
We congratulate our grant recipients and hope that the funds will be an
important contribution to the Baltic Sea environment and to their future careers!