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Assessment of recent eutrophication and climate influence in the Archipelago Sea based on the subfossil diatom record

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Abstract

Two short sediment cores from the Archipelago Sea in the northern Baltic Sea were examined for their siliceous microfossils in order to study recent eutrophication in the area. The diatom record was divided into diatom assemblage zones. Locally weighted weighted averaging regression and calibration was applied for the quantitative reconstruction of past TN concentrations. The cores were dated using radiometric (210Pb, 226Ra and 137Cs) methods. The diatom assemblages in the topmost zones in both cores indicate eutrophication during the last decade. TN reconstructions partially fail to trace the actual measured TN concentrations. Especially from the late 1980s to the mid 1990s, the dominating diatom species are more influenced by other factors, such as the length of the ice season, than by nutrient concentrations. It seems that in the Archipelago Sea, diatom assemblages are principally governed by climatic fluctuations with a moderate influence of eutrophication in recent years. The peak in sedimentation in the early 1990s coincides with the short ice seasons indicating that sedimentation may increase with decreasing ice-cover extent due to warming climate.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the K.H. Renlund Foundation, the Apothecary Väinö Edward Miettinen Foundation and the Academy of Finland for financial support. Janne Suomela from the Southwest Finland Regional Environment Centre provided the national coastal water-monitoring programme data for both sites. Patrick Eriksson from the Finnish Institute of Marine Research Ice Service provided the ice-data. We are grateful to Sanna Vaalgamaa, Janne Suomela and Tapio Suominen for help in the field. We also thank Prof. P.G. Appleby for the dating the cores.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geology, University of Turku, Turku, 20014, Finland

    Nanna Tuovinen & Joonas J. Virtasalo

  2. Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Kaarina Weckström

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  1. Nanna Tuovinen
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  2. Kaarina Weckström
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  3. Joonas J. Virtasalo
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Correspondence to Nanna Tuovinen.

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Tuovinen, N., Weckström, K. & Virtasalo, J.J. Assessment of recent eutrophication and climate influence in the Archipelago Sea based on the subfossil diatom record. J Paleolimnol 44, 95–108 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10933-009-9390-z

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