Climate change and ongoing transformation processes in economy and agriculture will have strong and multiple impacts in the Baltic region. In particular coastal zones face increasing hazards, e.g. due to sea level rise or changes in riverine nutrient loads and eutrophication. These changes also offer a wide range of new opportunities in the Baltic Region. Adaptation measures are needed but require a thorough and spatially differentiated understanding of underlying ecological, economic and social processes. Sixteen contributions by authors from eight countries give a comprehensive overview of these changes, their consequences and practical challenges with focus on coastal zones. Besides risks, the chances and opportunities of changes for the region are addressed and adaptation examples and strategies are given. The practitioners’ perspective and their demands are integrated in the various contributions.

This book discusses sea-level and coastline changes. These topics are becoming increasingly important for populations living along the edge of the world’s oceans and seas, especially in areas where eustatic sea-level rise is superimposed on isostatic subsidence and storm-induced coastal erosion. This is the case at the southern and eastern Baltic Sea coast: in the south, glacio-isostatic subsidence enhances the effect of climate-induced sea-level rise and strong storm effects are causing a continuous retreat of the coast. On the eastern coast glacio-isostatic uplift compensates for eustatic sea-level rise, but storm-induced waves are responsible for permanent morphodynamic changes to the coastline. There is an increasing need for protection concepts for defense but also for the economic use of the different types of coastal zones. The elaboration of these management concepts can be facilitated through models that generate future projections of coastal developments in the light of modern climate change. This anthology comprises the results of the research project “Coastline Changes of the southern Baltic Sea – Past and future projection (CoPaF)” funded by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education, which was run by a team of Estonian, German, Lithuanian, and Polish geoscientists and coastal engineers from 2010 to 2013 and overlapped with and complemented the work of COST Action SPLASHCOS supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology). As the southern and eastern Baltic serves as a natural laboratory for the investigation of coastal processes, the project’s findings contribute not only to the solution of regional problems in Baltic coastal research and engineering, but also to worldwide interests in description, modelling and parameterization of coastal processes and morphodynamics.

​This book is an update of the first BACC assessment, published in 2008. It offers new and updated scientific findings in regional climate research for the Baltic Sea basin. These include climate changes since the last glaciation (approx. 12,000 years ago), changes in the recent past (the last 200 years), climate projections up until 2100 using state-of-the-art regional climate models and an assessment of climate-change impacts on terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems. There are dedicated new chapters on sea-level rise, coastal erosion and impacts on urban areas. A new set of chapters deals with possible causes of regional climate change along with the global effects of increased greenhouse gas concentrations, namely atmospheric aerosols and land-cover change. The evidence collected and presented in this book shows that the regional climate has already started to change and this is expected to continue. Projections of potential future climates show that the region will probably become considerably warmer and wetter in some parts, but dryer in others. Terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems have already shown adjustments to increased temperatures and are expected to undergo further changes in the near future. The BACC II Author Team consists of 141 scientists from 12 countries, covering various disciplines related to climate research and related impacts. BACC II is a project of the Baltic Earth research network and contributes to the World Climate Research Programme.

This book focuses on the interchange between a selected multidisciplinary team on future coastal management in Europe. It serves as a background for the successful implementation of EC directives relevant to the coast. The study summarizes methodologies and analyses for supporting implementation of these directives and evaluates institutional and capacity requirements. It addresses issues of globalization including climate change and economic development. Integrated assessment is used and future scenarios for the coast are developed.

The first comprehensive overview of the enormous ecological diversity of Baltic coastal ecosystems is presented in this volume provides. A short introduction into the Baltic Sea as a reference ecosystem is followed by detailed descriptions of the characteristics of coastal ecosystems. Ecological case studies from four regions illustrate the different reactions of these ecosystems to natural and anthropogenic influences.

"Guidance for decision-makers, produced in the context of the INTERREG IIIB project "Developing policies and adaptation strategies to climate change in the Baltic Sea region (ASTRA)"--P. 2.