Publications

Yletyinen, J., J. Hentati-Sundberg, T. Blenckner, and Ö. Bodin. 2018. Fishing strategy diversification and fishers' ecological dependency. Ecology and Society 23(3):28.https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-10211-230328

 Sustainable fisheries management plays a critical role in supporting healthy marine ecosystems and the livelihoods of millions of people. An emerging view on fisheries management emphasizes the need to manage fisheries as complex social-ecological systems. Yet, our understanding of the outcomes of fisheries management from a social-ecological perspective is limited in comparison to that provided by either the biophysical or t...

Lynham, J., B.S. Halpern, T. Blenckner, T. Essington, J. Estes, M. Hunsicker, C. Kappel, A.K. Salomon, C. Scarborough, K.A. Selkoe, A. Stier. 2017. Costly stakeholder participation creates inertia in marine ecosystems. Marine Policy 76: 122-129.

Ecosystems often shift abruptly and dramatically between different regimes in response to human or natural disturbances. When ecosystems tip from one regime to another, the suite of available ecosystem benefits changes, impacting the stakeholders who rely on these benefits. These changes often create some groups who stand to incur large losses if an ecosystem returns to a previous regime. When the participation cost in the dec...

Griffiths, J.R., M. Kadin, F.J.A. Nascimento, T. Tamelander, A. Tornroos, S. Bonaglia, E. Bonsdorff, V. Bruchert, A. Gardmark, M. Jarnstrom, J. Kotta, M. Lindegren, M.C. Nordstrom, A. Norkko, J. Olsson, B. Weigel, R. Zydelis, T. Blenckner, S. Niiranen, M. Winder. 2017. The importance of benthic-pelagic coupling for marine ecosystem functioning in a changing world. Global Change Biology 23(6): 2179-2196.

Benthic–pelagic coupling is manifested as the exchange of energy, mass, or nutrients between benthic and pelagic habitats. It plays a prominent role in aquatic ecosystems, and it is crucial to functions from nutrient cycling to energy transfer in food webs. Coastal and estuarine ecosystem structure and function are strongly affected by anthropogenic pressures; however, there are large gaps in our understanding of the responses...

Niiranen, S., Richter, A., Blenckner, T., L.C. Stige, Valman, M. A-M., Eikseset. 2017.Global connectivity and cross-scale interactions create uncertainty for Blue Growth of Arctic fisheries. Marine Policy, Volume 87, January 2018, Pages 321-330. DOI: 10.1016/j.marpol.2017.10.024

The Arctic faces high expectations of Blue Growth due to future projections of easier access and increased biological productivity. These expectations are, however, often based on global and regional climate change projections and largely ignore the complexity of social-ecological interactions taking place across different temporal and spatial scales. This paper illustrates how such cross-scale interactions at, and across, dif...

Scharin, H., S. Ericsdotter, M. Elliott, R.K. Turner, S. Niiranen, T. Blenckner, K. Hyytiäinen, L. Ahlvik, H. Ahtiainen, J. Artell, L. Hasselström, T. Söderqvist, J. Rockström. 2016. Processes for the sustainable stewardship of marine environments. Ecological Economics 128: 55 – 67.

Sustainable stewardship of the marine environment necessitates a holistic approach encompassing all the relevant drivers, activities and pressures causing problems for the natural state of the system and their impact on human societies today and in the future. This article provides a framework as well as a decision support process and tool that could guide such an approach. In this process, identifying costs and benefits of mi...

Valman, M., A. Duit, T. Blenckner. 2016. Organizational responsiveness: The case of unfolding crises and problem detection within HELCOM. Marine Policy 70: 49 – 57

How and to what extent do international organizations detect, process and react to different types of change within their policy domains? This study addresses this question by combining a unique data set consisting of policy documents from the Helsinki Commission (HELCOM) with data measuring ecosystem change in the Baltic Sea during the period 1980–2013. Here HELCOM's responses to two types of ecosystem changes are investigate...

Yletyinen, J., Ö. Bodin, B. Weigel, M.C. Nordström, E. Bonsdorff, T. Blenckner. 2016. Regime shifts in marine communities: A complex systems perspective on food web dynamics. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 283: 20152569

Species composition and habitats are changing at unprecedented rates in the world's oceans, potentially causing entire food webs to shift to structurally and functionally different regimes. Despite the severity of these regime shifts, elucidating the precise nature of their underlying processes has remained difficult. We address this challenge with a new analytic approach to detect and assess the relative strength of different...

Adrian, R., D.O. Hessen, T. Blenckner, H. Hillebrand, S. Hilt, E. Jeppesen, D.M. Livingstone, D. Trolle. 2016. Environmental impacts - Lake ecosystems. In M. Quante, F. Colijn (Eds.), North Sea Region Climate Change Assessment. Springer International Publishing, pp. 315 – 340.

The North Sea region contains a vast number of lakes; from shallow, highly eutrophic water bodies in agricultural areas to deep, oligotrophic systems in pristine high-latitude or high-altitude areas. These freshwaters and the biota they contain are highly vulnerable to climate change. As largely closed systems, lakes are ideally suited to studying climate-induced effects via changes in ice cover, hydrology and temperature, as ...

Weigel, B., T. Blenckner, E. Bonsdorff. Maintained functional diversity in benthic communities in spite of diverging functional identities. Oikos DOI: 10.1111/oik.02894

Ecological studies based on time-series often investigate community changes centered on species abundance or biomass but rarely expose the consequential functional aspects underlying such changes. Functional diversity measures have proven to be more accurate predictors for ecosystem functioning than traditional taxonomic approaches and hence gained much attention. There are only limited studies available that analyse the funct...

Kadin, M., O. Olsson, J. Hentati-Sundberg, E. Willerström Ehrning, T. Blenckner. Common Guillemot Uria aalge parents adjust provisioning rates to compensate for low food quality. Ibis DOI: 10.1111/ibi.12335

The quantity and quality of food available within the foraging area set important constraints for chick-rearing birds, but responses to low quality are not well understood. This study explored the potential for parent birds to adjust quantity (feeding rate) and quality (energy content) in chick provisioning, by studying Common Guillemots  Uria aalge  on Stora Karlsö, Baltic Sea, predominantly utilizing Sprat Sprattus spra...