Marine Strategy Framework Directive - Review and analysis of EU Member States’ 2018 reports - Descriptor 1: Pelagic habitats
Assessment (Art. 8), Good Environmental Status (Art. 9) and Targets (Art. 10)
This report builds on the 6-year reporting cycle of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD). It presents the main results of the European Union Member States’ (MS) reports on the Descriptor 1, criterion D1C6 – Pelagic habitats - of the MSFD. As such, it serves as reference for the progress on the pelagic habitats as for the assessment (Article 8), determination of good environmental status (Article 9), and establishment of environmental targets (Article 10). The scope of this report is to analyse and evaluate the MS reports from a technical and scientific perspective, to assess good practices and prioritise the gaps. Moreover, the recommendations address key players for improving the implementation of reporting on these articles for pelagic habitats.
The findings show that environmental indicators are often used in place of criterion elements (i.e. habitat types), while also being characterized by same source but different thresholds values across marine regions. In a few reporting areas, Good Environmental Status (GES) was declared as achieved but information was lacking on how to discriminate good from not good status. To this end, environmental targets were too qualitative to suitably inform on the state to achieve GES, and to consider relevant pressures quantitatively. In order to improve the MSFD assessments for pelagic habitats, this report underscores the need to: i) cooperate between MS to harmonise the GES definition, ii) establish a coherent set of pelagic habitat types, agreed for each region and preferably across EU (equivalent to the MSFD benthic habitat types in GES Decision Table 2 and linked to EUNIS) that suitably reflect the GES of the pelagic habitat across their spatial and temporal variations, iii) set common agreed indicators to assess the state and pressures of the pelagic habitats at (sub)-region scale, and iv) develop quantitative threshold values for each indicator to allow assessment of progress towards GES.
MAGLIOZZI Chiara;
DRUON Jean-Noel;
BOSCHETTI Simona;
PALIALEXIS Andreas;
2021-04-15
Publications Office of the European Union
JRC124271
978-92-76-34199-4 (online),
1831-9424 (online),
EUR 30662 EN,
OP KJ-NA-30662-EN-N (online),
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC124271,
10.2760/09511 (online),
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