Nutrients from sea to field

Development of a concept of a water improvement fund and restoration of coastal areas – Government of Åland, County Administrative Board of Östergötland and the Åland Fish Farmers’ Association

A concept of a water improvement fund for coastal restoration measures was developed with an objective to examine different options and needs for new regulations for legislation and to find functional and sustainable solutions e.g. to be utilized in ecosystem based compensations in the future, for which Åland will act as “test laboratory”. The concept was tested in practice with pilot activities to reduce nutrients from the marine environment and to restore the coastal pilot areas into better condition: removing nutrient-rich bottom waters from two eutrophied semi-closed, coastal bays and testing the possibility of recycling nutrients by utilizing the water for irrigation on fields, and supporting the spawning of predatory fish-stocks by fishing stickleback in Åland and Östergötland region in Sweden.

Results

Results from this pilot were presented in the SEABASED Final Webinar on January 26th, 2021. See the presentation behind this link. Read and download the final report of this pilot here and the manual for irrigating fields here.

For more information, please contact

Mikael Wennström
Department of Social Affairs, Health and Environment
The Government of Åland
Tel. +358 (0)18-25455
e-mail: firstname.lastname@regeringen.ax