What’s up with ECOnnect and its new coordinator Emma

The project ECOnnect has got a new coordinator, Emma Anderssén, who works at Parks and Wildlife Finland in Vaasa. As she has been living by the sea all her life, Emma is happy to take part in a project that produces new information about the state of the marine environment in the Baltic Sea.

“The Baltic Sea is nowhere near a lost case. I have hope as there are so many innovative and intelligent people working to improve the Baltic Sea’s environment”, Emma assures.

ECOnnect contributes to this task by studying how climate change is expected to affect the marine environment in the Gulf of Bothnia. For example, what will the blue mussel’s living environment look like in 100 years, and how will other parts of the marine environment such as fish occurrence change in the future? In the project we want to produce information that can help us tackle and adapt to climate change. The aim is that the data produced within ECOnnect can assists local authorities, who work in community planning.

“There is a lot of information about the global effects of climate change, but it is also important to produce information at a regional level, just like in ECOnnect. In this way, we can act according to what is best for our local environment”, Emma describes.

The locals can also enjoy the project’s results in 2021, when we produce videos, animations and visual maps. The aim is to offer information in an entertaining and comprehensible way. For authorities in the field, we hint that ECOnnect will organise a workshop in the beginning of 2021. We will inform about this later on.

Get to know our new coordinator

Emma has done her master’s degree in climate change at the University of Copenhagen. In addition, she has studied environmental and marine biology at Åbo Akademi. The smell of seawater makes Emma feel like home anywhere, and she enjoys her versatile work within ECOnnect.