Status of pelagic habitats within the EU-Marine Strategy Framework Directive: proposals for improving consistency and representativeness of the assessment

While the EU-Marine Strategy Framework Directive and the Commission Decision (EU) 2017/848 have set criteria and methodological standards for the assessment and determination of Good Environmental Status (GES) for pelagic habitats in EU waters, there is strong evidence that Member States have not yet harmonized approaches for pelagic GES assessment across EU marine waters. Today, the status of pelagic habitats is assessed by evaluating whether GES is achieved by each of the pelagic indicators (eleven different indicators are used among the regional seas), but this approach fails to observe the high variability of the pelagic environment. To this end, GES is not estimated at the pelagic habitat scale but only for each individual indicator. This paper synthesises the latest developments on pelagic habitat assessment and identifies the main factors limiting the consistency of the assessment across Member States: i) coarse spatial and temporal scales of sampling effort as regards to the pelagic habitat dynamics, ii) little consideration of the whole range of plankton (and, to some extent, of zooplankton) size and trophic spectra, iii) lack of integrated hydro-biogeochemical and biological studies and collaboration among experts from different scientific fields, iv) limited availability of pressure-based indicators, and v) lack of integration methods of the pelagic indicators’ status to determine the overall pelagic habitat GES.

MAGLIOZZI Chiara;  PALMA Marco;  DRUON Jean-Noel;  PALIALEXIS Andreas;  MCQUATTERS-GOLLOP Abigail;  VARKITZI Ioanna;  GONZALEZ-QUIROS Rafael;  GOROKHOVA Elena;  HEYDEN Birgit;  BOICENCO Laura;  ARTIGAS Luis Felipe; 

2023-01-11

ELSEVIER SCI LTD

JRC129928

0308-597X (online),   

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308597X22005188,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC129928,   

10.1016/j.marpol.2022.105467 (online),