News
28.02.2025
New paper: The Impacts of Loading From Acid Sulfate Soils on Boreal Estuarine Sediments
Estuaries play a vital role in the coastal environment by filtering pollutants and nutrients from catchment runoff. In areas where acid sulfate (AS) soils are abundant, the importance of the estuary as a coastal filter is heightened as AS soils typically stress the marine environment with acidic metal-laden drainage waters. We took sediment cores from a shallow estuary in Western Finland and used geochemical and palaeoecological methods to investigate how the estuary is affected by loading from AS soils. The AS soil impact is recorded in sediment diatom assemblages as a decline in species richness and diversity, and as a shift from species preferring pelagic conditions to species indicative of more eutrophic conditions. The hypersulfidic sediments have a high acidity potential and accumulated metal content. The enrichment in the estuary is primarily driven by hydrodynamic conditions. The estuary’s role as a coastal filter is diminishing as the majority of AS soil loading is driven seaward. Without proper management, disturbance of the estuarine sediments can cause disastrous consequences at a local level.
https://bsssjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ejss.70075
24.01.2025
New PhD student
The SENCE team is growing in numbers with a new PhD student Laura Laaksonen. She is hired for the doctoral pilot under Digital Waters flagship program. Her task is to study microplastic pollution within the Baltic Sea. Previously she has been working at Traficom as a nautical chart specialist and at Finnish Naval academy as marine geologist. However now she is happy to be back at the university to study marine sediments.
Laura has a background in coastal geography and marine geology. She is currently living in Kemiönsaari where her study area is right at her backyard. She enjoys spending time observing nature by the coastline with her dog and sailing around Archipelago Sea. Usually, you may find her at the beach with great collection of well-rounded rocks in her pockets!
5.6.2024
Dreaming of a white Christmas?
SENCEs Christmas party was about pushing the boundaries from natural sciences towards art. The groups’ researchers challenged themselves with a completely new approach for winter conditions. Instead of digging sediment archives, a more colourful methods was chosen. The aim was to ensure white Christmas for all!
Picture: Timo Saarinen
27.11.2024
Microplastics in winter ice show higher concentrations compared to those of water
We monitored the microplastic concentrations in winter ice for four consecutive winters. The highest microplastic concentrations were measured during warmer mean winter temperatures. Warm winter temperatures in central Finland result in a less snowy cloudy ice but instead thicker clear ice layer that was sampled. The annually laminated sediments representing the four ice monitoring years were also investigated. Microplastic concentrations in the spring flood layers were higher compared to layers formed during summer. This suggests that microplastics released from snow and water are rapidly deposited. Larger microplastic concentrations occurred related to snow rich winters.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969724077593
Picture: Annukka Pekkarinen
20.11.2024
Automatic sediment traps deployed in a perfect weather
Snow storm did not surprise us, but either did it prevent us from compleating the last field work of the fall season. Our PhD student Sohvi Railo is investigating the diatom assemblages related to winter ice and timing of diatom blooms. The automatic sediment traps were deployed near Tvarminne research station from the Augusta research vessel in collaboration with Tvärminne Zoological research station. Sohvi is eagerly waiting for spring to collect her sediment samples. Before that, we hope there is an icy winter.
1.9.2024
New recruitment
Nanna Tuovinen is hired for a post doc position under Digital Waters Flagship program. Nanna is specialized in investigating both lacustrine and marine subfossil diatoms and will study the water quality and ecological change both in estuarine systems and lakes through time scales from recent years all the way for thousands of years back in time.
Photo: Jinheum Park
23.4.2024
Mohib’s greetings from EGU Vienna 2024
This year, our team was represented in the EGU meeting by Mohib Billah. The atmosphere in Vienna was very inspiring. The most interesting sessions were topics related to the late Holocene climate change were included, says Mohib. He presented a poster about his PhD project “Geochemical signals from biogenic varves reflect hydroclimate and lake oxygen conditions in central Finland” in session CL1.2.10 organized by INTIMATE network. The poster session was nice; people were interested in his research, and there were many interesting discussions in front of his poster.
Picture: LIAE
22.2.2024
Microplastics found in older sediment layers than expected
Our research from Latvian lake sediment records reveals microplastics in sediment layers that formed long before the invention of plastic materials. While the concentration of microplastics in sediments has been proposed as a potential marker for geological dating, this new discovery highlights that the migration of microplastics within the sediment layers is not yet well understood.
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Cover Photo: INTIMATE Summer School 2022