Challenges and opportunities of rapidly changing ice properties on ecosystem services from freshwaters

The main goal of this project is to provide a mechanistic understanding of ice property changes in a warmer world and to outline challenges and opportunities of the changes on the delivery of ecosystem services from lakes.

A few studies are available that describe ecological effects of a rapid decline in the extent and duration of ice cover but none of these studies considers changes in ice properties, i.e. there is a fundamental knowledge gap how crystal structure, impurities and thickness of ice is changing under global warning and in how far these changes will challenge or support ecosystem services from lakes.

To fill this important knowledge gap we will perform detailed studies on ice properties and their effect on primary production and ice stability/safety.

To tackle the challenges associated with ice property changes such as increased drowning by falling through unstable ice we will come up with solutions by providing a forecasting service on ice stability and by giving adequate education on ice safety.

We believe that this project will make a substantial contribution to combat climate change and its impacts (SDG 13), to halt biodiversity loss (SDG 15), to provide infrastructure (SDG 9), to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education (SDG 4) and to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being (SDG 3) for hundreds of millions of people whose heritage and identity is directly coupled to snow and ice, like it is in Sweden.