Who Are We
The Baltic Health Index is a project jointly led by Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC), at Stockholm University, Sweden together with the Ocean Health Index team. The first phase has been funded by the Johansson Family foundation and the Baltic Ecosystem Adaptive Management, BEAM, a five-year research programme (2010-2014). The second phase, started Jan 2019, is funded by the Johansson Family foundation.
This trans-disciplinary project is led by Thorsten Blenckner at SRC and involves many international researchers from around the Baltic Sea and management organisations.
The Baltic Health Index formally started in 2015 and preliminary scores were completed in 2017. Members of the team conducting the first assessment additionally included Jennifer Griffiths, Ning Jiang, Julie Lowndes, Melanie Frazer, Cornelia Ludwig. Currently, the second assessment is conducted by Eleanore Campbell, Susa Niiranen and Thorsten Blenckner.
Lead Scientist:
Thorsten Blenckner
Thorsten Blenckner, quantitative marine ecologist with interests in ecosystem-based management and modeling pressures (e.g. overfishing, salinity, climate, alien species) which trigger regime shifts of the Baltic Sea ecosystem, has led the BHI project since its beginning in 2014.
Data Analyst/Scientific Programmer:
Ellie Campbell
Ellie Campbell joined the team in January 2019 to begin work on the second BHI assessment. As a data analyst and scientific programmer, she writes code to tailor the Ocean Health Index (OHI) framework to the Baltic Sea, manage datasets behind the models, and support investigation of patterns or interactions.
Marine Food Webs/Dynamics Scientist:
Susa Niiranen
Susa Niiranen contributes expertise in multiple interacting drivers, marine modeling and cross-scale dynamics to the BHI project.