Baltic Nest Institute (BNI) is an international research alliance between Stockholm University Baltic Sea Centre, The Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management, Aarhus University and the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE). BNI was established in 2007 to continue the research conducted in the international research programme MARE (1999-2006).

The Baltic Nest Institute is responsible for the Nest system, a decision support system aimed at facilitating adaptive management of environmental concern in the Baltic Sea. Nest can be used to calculate required actions needed to attain politically agreed targets for the Baltic Sea ecosystem. The main focus of the model is on eutrophication and the flows of nutrients from land to sea. 

Baltic Nest Institute Sweden participates in several national and international projects aiming to understand the environmental problems in the Baltic Sea and show the consequences of different courses of action using marine modelling. Some of these projects are presented below.

The modeling project “Legacy nutrient dynamics in the Baltic Sea catchment: implications for managing eutrophication” (2020-2022) estimates the magnitude of the legacy storage pools of nitrogen and phosphorus in the Baltic Sea catchment area and their contribution to current and future nutrient loads.

BONUS DESTONY (2018-2020) is one of the BONUS synthesis projects where BNI Sweden participate together with Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), Aarhus University and Leibniz University for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde.

The aim of the EU Horizon 2020 project ClimeFish is to support sustainable fisheries, enable an increase in European aquaculture production, facilitate employment and regional development in the sectors, and develop forecasting and management tools for adapting to climate change. The project simulate the growth of the most important and the less resilient cultured and wild caught fish and shellfish species in Europe during the RCP4.5 and the 8.5 IPCC scenarios. 

BONUS BLUEWEBS (2017-2020) will investigate the development and consequences of novel food webs using innovative data analyses such as big data analytics, cutting edge trait-based ecology and ecological network analysis. The project will provide tools for ecosystem-based management, such as indicators for Marine Strategy Framework Directive descriptors and Bayesian Network based decision support systems. Stockholm University participates in the project together with partners from Finland, Germany, Poland and Latvia.

This project studied both the supply and demand of marine ecosystem services across the entire Baltic Sea region in a spatially and temporally detailed manner. The project ran 2015-2018 and included participants from Finland, Denmark, Germany, Sweden and Poland.

Within the BONUS project BLUEPRINT (2014-2018) the model BALTSEM (BAltic Sea Long-Term large Scale Eutrophication Model) was further developed to include bacterial processes. The project combined field studies, experiments, next-generation sequencing, bioinformatics and modeling.

BONUS COCOA (2014-2017) is an abbrevation for Nutrient cocktail in coastal zones of the Baltic Sea – improving understanding of the transformation and retention of nutrients and organic matter in the coastal zone. BNI Sweden participated in the project with the main purpose to create a database containing basic information of all the Baltic Sea coastal areas and contribute to quantification of the filter function based on empirical data, measurements and models.