Press release 2015-01-22 at 10:11
Marine Research Station on Utö Island. Photo: Lauri Laakso
The Academy of Finland has granted 1.25 million euros to the Finnish Marine Research Infrastructure consortium FINMARI, which is managed by the Finnish Environment Institute SYKE. The Academy has recently granted a total of 19.3 million euros to 48 research infrastructure projects in different fields.
“FINMARI was established two years ago and last year it was accepted on the roadmap of the essential national research infrastructures. The national research infrastructures serve the wide research community by offering equipment and research services for a reasonable price for extensive use both nationally and internationally. This funding received from the Academy signals that the consortium's operations are moving on to a new phase,” says the coordinator of the consortium, Research Professor Timo Tamminen from the Marine Research Centre of SYKE.
New lines of research
In practise, the funding is allocated to the six member organisations of the consortium and used for acquiring research equipment and systems for various locations according to a joint plan. The 1.25 million euros in funding granted to FINMARI will be distributed between the Marine Research Centre of SYKE, Finnish Meteorological Institute, Geological Survey of Finland GTK, and the archipelago research centres of University of Helsinki, University of Turku and Åbo Akademi.
Each FINMARI partner has its own research profile, which complement each other. The funding helps to sharpen these profiles and opens completely new lines of research. The largest individual investments are the hovercraft for the Tvärminne Zoological Station, which enables year-round field research and experiment operations, the long-distance underwater glider for the Finnish Meteorological Institute, the vibrohammer sampler for deep sediments for the GTK, the imaging phytoplankton buoy for SYKE and the new aquarium systems of experimental research for the Seili and Husö research stations.
“The objective is to achieve better knowledge of the temporal and spatial variability of the Baltic Sea ecosystem, which serves both the modelling of the ecosystem functioning and the efficient allocation of marine monitoring programmes. This helps us to forecast the reactions of the ecosystem to climate change and other human-induced pressures,” says Research Professor Tamminen.
Real-time measuring equipment
The Marine Research Centre of SYKE coordinates the operations of the consortium and is in charge of commissioning the new, real-time measuring equipment recording the biological functions of the sea in the new Atmospheric and Marine Research Station on Utö Island, and on-board the Alg@line merchant ships sailing the Baltic Sea.
Nearly 60 research infrastructures applied for funding from the Academy of Finland. Funding was granted to under a third of the applicants. In the future, the Academy will grant the funding annually to the best Finnish infrastructures and the best international infrastructures utilised by Finnish scientists.
Research infrastructures refer to research equipment, devices, materials and services, which enable the research and development work that occurs during the different phases of innovation process. These infrastructures support organised research work, researcher training and teaching, and improve the national research and innovation capacity.
For more information, please contact:
Research professor Timo Tamminen, SYKE, tel. +358 295 251 678, firstname.surname@environment.fi
Communication Specialist Aira Saloniemi, SYKE, tel. +358 400 148 875, firstname.surname@environment.fi