Assessment (Art. 8), Good Environmental Status (Art. 9) and Targets (Art. 10)
The current report analyses the information provided by the European Union Member States (MS) on Theme – ecosystem, including food webs, relating to Descriptor 1 and 4 of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD). The reported information by the MS follows the Article 17 requirements of the MSFD for updating Articles 8 (GES assessment), 9 (GES determination) and 10 (targets) of the Directive, for the last 6-year MSFD reporting cycle. By September 2020, 20 Member States reported on D4 in electronic format.
Regarding Article 8, most of the Member States reported for the primary criteria D4C1 (trophic guild species diversity) and D4C2 (total abundance between trophic guilds) and less for the remaining two secondary ones. Additionally, we detected several issues that need to be harmonized to achieve comparable assessments across MS, such as the assessment period. Moreover, the current gaps in threshold values, threshold value sources, reported values and trends did not allow to get an overview of the GES status across Europe for food webs. Evidently, the gaps of data could not support harmonised integration rules for criteria and harmonised trophic guilds at regional or subdivision level.
With regards to Article 9, a general lack of harmonization in the GES determination was detected. GES was not specified in a quantitative manner or in terms of threshold values.
With regards to Article 10, inconsistencies were observed in the way the MS have set their targets, while many of the targets reported were not directly relevant to food webs. Targets were largely not harmonised across MS and they were rarely quantitative and/or associated with specific thresholds, pressures and measures.
The present report provides recommendations for the application of D4 criteria, GES determination and target setting for food webs.
BOSCHETTI Simona;
PIRODDI Chiara;
DRUON Jean-Noel;
PALIALEXIS Andreas;
2021-04-16
Publications Office of the European Union
JRC124263
978-92-76-32462-1 (online),
978-92-76-32461-4 (print),
1831-9424 (online),
1018-5593 (print),
EUR 30652 EN,
OP KJ-NA-30652-EN-N (online),
OP KJ-NA-30652-EN-C (print),
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC124263,
10.2760/32522 (online),
10.2760/990099 (print),
