Press releases

In her doctoral dissertation, Pinja Näkki, a researcher at the Finnish Environment Institute, has studied risks that organisms such as bivalves living on the seafloor face from microplastics. As much as a quarter of the Baltic clam that were studied ingested microplastics when the surface of the sediment had plastic on it. Microplastics ground from car tyres were found to cause stress and organelle damage to the Baltic clams. Pinja Näkki will defend her dissertation on Friday, 10 September.

International Landscape Day will be celebrated in October. As in previous years, the festivities in Finland will include an open photo competition, guided landscape walks and a photography campaign that is already launched today.

During the summer, the cyanobacterial situation has varied in both Finnish lakes and sea areas. The amount of cyanobacteria was exceptionally at its peak in the sea areas already in mid-July. Even in inland waters, the sunny and calm weather of early summer, as well as the warm waters, accelerated the growth of cyanobacteria, and as a result cyanobacteria began to bloom earlier than usual at many of the national algal monitoring sites.

The risks posed by climate change and the adaptation measures required to address those risks are usually evaluated using methods based on climate scenarios. A different approach is used in the doctoral dissertation by Finnish Environment Institute researcher Nina Pirttioja. In her work she developed a method based on sensitivity analysis for assessing impact responses. Pirttioja defends her doctoral dissertation at the University of Helsinki on 3 September.

The amounts of blue-green algae in lakes and coastal areas are still smaller than average. Only in some areas of the Archipelago Sea have abundant cyanobacteria been observed in coastal areas. As is typical for the late summer, the amounts of cyanobacteria have continued to decline in open sea areas.