Indicator Reports

The aim of HELCOM environmental indicators is to provide information on recent state of of the Baltic marine environment and thends in variables related to eutrophication and hazardous substances.

Indicators try to simplify a complex reality. One indicator does not explain the complex environmental problems.

Each individual indicator explains something about the one issue it represents but practically nothing about the larger features or the system as a whole. Therefore the information presented in the Indicator Reports are combined in periodic assessments (see Fourth Periodic Assessment of the State of the Marine Environment of the Baltic Sea Area, 1994-1998 (2003), Third Baltic Sea Pollution Load Compilation (1998) which provide a more holistic approach to the complex environmental problems and their reasons.

An indicator present information using data obtained by HELCOM monitoring programmes:

• Pollution Load Compilations (PLC-Air and PLC-Water)
• Cooperative Monitoring in the Baltic Marine Environment - COMBINE
• Monitoring of Radioactive Sustances (MORS)

The following Indicator Reports are available:

• Hydrography and oxygen in deep basins
• Water exchange between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea and conditions in the deep basins
• Runoff of freshwater
• Horizontal variation of dissolved nutrients
• Chlorophyll a concentrations from satellite remote-sensing of ocean colour
• Phytoplankton biomass and species succession in the Gulf of Finland, Northern Baltic Proper and Arkona Basin
• Trace metals in the Baltic Sea water
• Cd, Hg, Pb emissions to the air
• Atmospheric depositions of Cd, Hg, Pb
• Nitrogen emissions to the air
• Atmospheric Deposition of Nitrogen
• Concentrations of artificial radionuclide caesium-137 in the Baltic Sea fish
  
• Total amounts of the artificial radionuclide caesium -137 in Baltic Sea sediments