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Coastal eutrophication is a major issue worldwide, also affecting the Baltic Sea and its coastal waters. Effective management responses to coastal eutrophication require good understanding of the interacting coastal pressures from land, the open sea, and the atmosphere, and associated coastal ecosystem impacts. In this study, we investigate how research on Baltic coastal eutrophication has handled these interactions so far and what key research gaps still remain. We do this through a scoping review, identifying 832 scientific papers with a focus on Baltic coastal eutrophication. These are categorized in terms of study focus, methods, and consideration of coastal system components and land-coast-sea interactions. The coastal component categories include coastal functions (including also socio-economic driver aspects), pressures that are natural (or mediated by a natural process or system) or directly anthropogenic, and management responses. The classification results show that considerably more studies focus on coastal eutrophication pressures (52%) or impacts (39%) than on characterizing the coastal eutrophication itself (20%). Moreover, few studies investigate pressures and impacts together, indicating that feedbacks are understudied. Regarding methods, more studies focus on data collection (62%) than on linking and synthetic methods (44%; e.g., modelling), and very few studies use remote sensing (6%) or participatory (3%) methods. Coastal links with land and open sea are mentioned but much less investigated. Among the coastal functions, studies considering ecological aspects are dominant, but much fewer studies investigate human aspects and the coastal filter function. Among the coastal pressures, studies considering nutrient loads are dominant, but much fewer studies investigate the sources of these loads, especially long-lived legacy sources and possible solutions for their mitigation. Overall, few studies investigate synergies, trade-offs and incentives for various solutions to address cross-scale multi-solution management., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Successful implementation of an international nutrient abatement agreement, such as the Baltic Sea Action Plan (BSAP), requires consistent understanding of the baseline nutrient loads, and a perception of acceptable costs and fairness in targeted reductions of these base line loads. This article presents a general framework for identifying the implications of divergence between different nutrient load quantification approaches, with regard to both cost and fairness criteria outcomes, for the international agreement to decrease nutrient loads into the Baltic Sea as presented in the BSAP. The results indicate that even relatively small divergence in the nutrient load quantification translates into relatively large differences in abatement cost for different Baltic Sea countries. A robust result, irrespective of differences in nutrient load assessments, is a conflict between abatement cost effectiveness and fairness, with relatively poor countries facing heavy abatement cost burdens for cost-effective international load abatement.

Changes to runoff due to climate change may influence management of nutrient loading to the sea. Assuming unchanged river nutrient concentrations, we evaluate the effects of changing runoff on commitments to nutrient reductions under the Baltic Sea Action Plan. For several countries, climate projections point to large variability in load changes in relation to reduction targets. These changes either increase loads, making the target more difficult to reach, or decrease them, leading instead to a full achievement of the target. The impact of variability in climate projections varies with the size of the reduction target and is larger for countries with more limited commitments. In the end, a number of focused actions are needed to manage the effects of climate change on nutrient loads: reducing uncertainty in climate projections, deciding on frameworks to identify best performing models with respect to land surface hydrology, and increasing efforts at sustained monitoring of water flow changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various features of a landscape contribute to the regulating ecosystem service of reducing waterborne pollutant loading to downstream environments. At local scales, wetlands have been shown to be effective in retaining pollutants. Here, we investigate the landscape-scale contribution to pollutant retention provided by multiple wetlands. We develop a general analytical model which shows that the retention contribution of wetlands and other landscape features is only significant if a large fraction of the total waterborne pollutant transport passes through them. Next, by means of a statistical analysis of official data, we quantify the nutrient retention contribution of wetlands for multiple sub-catchments in two Swedish Water Management Districts. We compare this with the retention contribution of two other landscape features: the waterborne transport distance and major lakes. The landscape-scale retention contribution of wetlands is undetectable; rather, the other two landscape features account for much of the total nutrient retention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eutrophication problems in coastal and marine waters worldwide emphasize the significance, for the scientific community as well as the whole society, of relevant quantification of catchment-scale nitrogen transport from land to coast. Different catchment-scale nitrogen budget models use, and base management recommendations on, quite different process representations of and spatial resolution approaches to in-stream nitrogen attenuation. We compare three different spatial resolution approaches to modeling nitrogen loss rates in streams of the same drainage basin. Results show that commonly used spatial model aggregation may lead to artificial decrease of calibrated nitrogen loss rates with increasing stream depth (or flow), in addition to any such dependences that may prevail in independently measurable reality. Coastal nitrogen impact predictions and practical management implications of large-scale model aggregation of nitrogen attenuation rates may further differ considerably from those based on rates from finer resolution modeling or independent measurements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coastal eutrophication is a common problem worldwide, with main drivers including land-based freshwater and nutrient discharges, as well as hydroclimatic and open sea conditions. This study investigates the combined effects of different hydroclimatic and eutrophication management scenarios on coastal water quality and ecological status. As a case study we consider and simulate these scenarios for the Himmerfjärden Bay, situated in the semi-enclosed Baltic Sea. Effects on different eutrophication-relevant variables are assessed for several potential land, coast and/or sea-based management scenarios under different hydroclimatic conditions spanning the range of recent past observations. Our results show that the land and sea-based management scenarios have different effects on each of the studied eutrophication-relevant coastal variable. In general, management strategies need to target both nitrogen and phosphorus reduction for robust coastal effects. We find hydroclimate as a key non-human eutrophication driver, which can substantially counteract management effects. For hydroclimatic conditions close to the recently experienced average, various management measures can improve water quality and ecosystem status in the studied local Baltic coast. Under projected climate change, however, such improvement will require combined land- and sea-based measures. • Hydroclimate controls effectiveness of coastal eutrophication management. • Management measures less effective under wetter–warmer conditions. • Combined land and sea-based measures needed under projected climate change. • Dual nitrogen/phosphorus measures needed for robust management. • Internal phosphorus loading not main eutrophication driver in Himmerfjärden Bay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This opinion piece addresses subsurface legacy sources and their role in mitigation of large‐scale water pollution and eutrophication. We provide a mechanistic theoretical basis and concrete data‐based exemplification of dominant contributions from such sources to total recipient loads. We specifically develop a diagnostic test to detect such contributions, recognizing that they are inaccessible and associated with long transport times that tend to evade detection when homogeneous catchment models are calibrated to typically heterogeneous catchments. Dominant legacy‐source contributions are also in practice untreatable within the commonly short time frames given for compliance with environmental regulation. We therefore argue that, for considerable water quality improvements to be achieved within such short time frames, mitigation measures need to be spatially differentiated and directed to (sub)catchments without major legacy sources. The presented diagnostic test identifies dominant prevalence of such sources where there is linear temporal correlation between the nutrient/pollutant loads and the water discharges from a (sub)catchment. Confidence in this identification may be strengthened by independent quantification of long transport times and records of temporally extended presence of nutrient/pollutant sources in the same (sub)catchment. This article is categorized under:Science of Water > Water and Environmental ChangeEngineering Water > Planning Water Nutrients and pollutants from earlier land‐surface inputs may have accumulated in subsurface legacy sources that add to current waterborne loads. We have developed a diagnostic test to guide effective, spatially differentiated mitigation measures to (sub)catchment zones without dominant legacy sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Phosphorous (P) transport and retention is investigated here based on data from a 3-year field study of five drainage ditch reaches at Färingsö, west of Stockholm, Sweden. Results show that P retention rate in the drainage reaches greatly depends on and decreases with increasing water flow and watercourse depth. This supports previous simulation indications and implies that changing drainage reach depth and flow conditions may considerably change P loading to downstream waters. In deeper drainage reaches with tile-drained fields in their catchment areas, which are common in Nordic lowlands, particulate P amounted to about 80% of total P, with about half of this fraction being bio-available. As much as 70% of that particulate P was retained in a reach section that was flow- and depth-restricted by heavy vegetation. Retained P in sediments was found to be mostly bound to Fe and/or Al. Some of that PAl–Fe fraction may after dissolution become more permanently retained by re-binding to Ca. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Hypoxia, a growing worldwide problem, has been intermittently present in the modern Baltic Sea since its formation ca. 8000 cal. yr BP. However, both the spatial extent and intensity of hypoxia have increased with anthropogenic eutrophication due to nutrient inputs. Physical processes, which control stratification and the renewal of oxygen in bottom waters, are important constraints on the formation and maintenance of hypoxia. Climate controlled inflows of saline water from the North Sea through the Danish Straits is a critical controlling factor governing the spatial extent and duration of hypoxia. Hypoxia regulates the biogeochemical cycles of both phosphorus (P) and nitrogen (N) in the water column and sediments. Significant amounts of P are currently released from sediments, an order of magnitude larger than anthropogenic inputs. The Baltic Sea is unique for coastal marine ecosystems experiencing N losses in hypoxic waters below the halocline. Although benthic communities in the Baltic Sea are naturally constrained by salinity gradients, hypoxia has resulted in habitat loss over vast areas and the elimination of benthic fauna, and has severely disrupted benthic food webs. Nutrient load reductions are needed to reduce the extent, severity, and effects of hypoxia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]