Jan Harff is a geologists and Professor emeritus for Marine Geology at the Leibniz-Institute for Baltic Sea Research, Warnemünde, Germany. Currently, he serves as Humboldt Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Szczecin, Poland, and as adjunct Professor at two research institutes of the Academica sinica. He is a elected Foreign Member of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences and the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. His main fields of interest are marine geology, sedimentology, paleoceanography and mathematical geology.

Svante Björck is Professor and head of Quaternary Sciences at the GeoBiosphere Science Centre in Lund. His main research interests concern paleoclimate and paleoenvironments, including sea levels, of the last 150.000 years. He is an elected member of the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences, of the Royal Fysiographic Society. He was internationally evaluated 2006 by VR as 'Outstanding Swedish Quaternary Geologist', chosen as the "Geologist of the Year" (Årets Geolog) in 2006 by Sveriges Naturvetarförbund.

Peer Hoth is a geologist with a Ph.D. from the Technical University in Berlin. He works now since two years for the energy department of the German Ministry of Economics and Technology. Before, he served as a research scientist for different research institutions mainly in the field of energy. His main field of interest are basin analysis, sedimentology, oil and gas exploration and geothermal energy.

Introduction.- Geological and tectonic evolution.- The basin fill as a climate and sea level record.- Coastline changes.- Sediment dynamics.- Interactions between a changing environment and society.- Hydrogeological modelling.- Monitoring.

This book reports about the results of a Special Symposium "The Baltic Sea Basin", held on August 11, 2008, within the frame of the 33rd IGC at Oslo, Norway in order to foster the understanding of the Baltic Basin as a unit in terms of genesis, structure, ongoing processes and utilization. It is the first time that in a joint publication, scientists from different disciplines give a comprehensive overview about the Baltic Sea basin in such a general sense. The book will be used not only by students and scientist but also by engineers and decision makers from industry and politics. Summarizing the state of the art in the investigation of the Baltic Sea Basin, but also in the resource utilisation of the basin the book will enhance the development of new monitoring strategies and technical device design including satellite observation methods, the establishment of international research laboratories, innovative topics for interdisciplinary research projects, etc.