Geodiversity and Seafloor Substrate Mapping to Support Marine Management in the Åland Islands, Baltic Sea – Results from the Biodiversea LIFE IP Project

The Biodiversea LIFE IP project (2021–2029) is Finland’s largest coordinated initiative to safeguard biodiversity of the Baltic Sea and promote the sustainable use of its marine environment. The Geological Survey of Finland GTK conducted marine geological surveys around the Åland Islands to support informed marine management and conservation.

The work combined seismo-acoustic methods, including subbottom profiling, multibeam echosounder, and sidescan sonar, with extensive surface sediment sampling. These surveys produced detailed information on seabed geodiversity, sediment distribution, and substrate types, indicating a highly geologically diverse seafloor around the Åland Islands. The resulting datasets improve our understanding of the physical and geological properties of the seafloor, which form the foundation for biodiversity and habitat development in the area.

We describe the geological setting, the applied survey methods, and the contribution of geoscientific information to multidisciplinary marine conservation planning. The results highlight the importance of geological data for understanding marine ecosystems and for supporting science-based decision-making in marine management.

The Biodiversea LIFE IP project is coordinated by Metsähallitus. In addition to GTK, project partners include the Baltic Sea Action Group (BSAG), Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), Ministry of the Environment, Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke), Turku University of Applied Sciences, Åbo Akademi University, and the Åland Provincial Government. The project has received funding from the LIFE Programme of the European Union. The material reflects the views of the authors, and the European Commission or CINEA is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.