Article from Baltic Earth Newsletter 4 (Jan 2018):

WaterPUCK
Modeling of the impact of the agricultural holdings and land-use structure on the quality of inland and coastal waters of the Baltic Sea set up on the example of the Municipality of Puck region -
Integrated info-prediction Web Service WaterPUCK

WaterPUCK is an innovation and interdisciplinary project integrating knowledge of different disciplines into the implementation of the environmental protection policy, sustainable growth and improvement of the competiveness of the polish economy. WaterPUCK combines several different components and methods such as retrospective analyses of existing monitoring data sets, in situ measures and the application of various models (Figure 1) to estimate main mechanisms and threats responsible for the pollution transport from the agricultural holdings and land-use structure to the surface and ground water, and in consequence to the Bay of Puck ecosystem, Southern Baltic Sea.

Its major  goal is to foster improvement of natural environment as well as development of regional and national economy. Identification of main mechanisms responsible for the transport of pollutants in surface and ground waters, will allow the application in practical commercial solutions, due to innovating approach and methodology of industrial and development research.

Beyond the scientific and economical outcome of the research, the project is considered as an important step to strengthen Polish B&R sector in general by applying for international and national funds from different sources such as Horizon 2020, South Baltic Programme, National Science.

WaterPuck is financed by the National Centre for Research and Development within BIOSTRATEG Programme "Natural environment, agriculture and forestry" devoted to the Problem Area I "Rational management of natural resources with special regard to water management".

The project will be carried out in 2017-2020 by the research consortium leaded by Institute of Oceanology Polish Academy of Sciences (IOPAN) and including Gdansk University of Technology (GUT), Institute of Technology and Life Sciences (ITP), Maritime Institute in Gdansk (MIG) and Municipality of Puck (GP).

Project leader:
Lidia Dzierzbicka-Głowacka, Physical Oceanography Department, Institute of Oceanology, Polish Academy of Sciences (dzierzb@iopan.gda.pl)

For inquiries about this research, please directly refer to the authors.