Abstract
Sustainability of marine ecosystems and their services are dependent on marine biodiversity, which is threatened worldwide. Biodiversity protection is a major target of the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive, requiring assessment of the status of biodiversity on the level of species, habitats, and ecosystems including genetic diversity and the role of biodiversity in food web functioning and structure. This paper provides a summary of the development of new indicators and refinement of existing ones in order to address some of the observed gaps in indicator availability for marine biodiversity assessments considering genetic, species, habitat, and ecosystem levels. Promising new indicators are available addressing genetic diversity of microbial and benthic communities. Novel indicators to assess biodiversity and food webs associated with habitats formed by keystone species (such as macroalgae) as well as to map benthic habitats (such as biogenic reefs) using high resolution habitat characterization were developed. We also discuss the advances made on indicators for detecting impacts of non-native invasive species and assessing the structure and functioning of marine food-webs. The latter are based on indicators showing the effects of fishing on trophic level and size distribution of fish and elasmobranch communities well as phytoplankton and zooplankton community structure as food web indicators. New and refined indicators are ranked based on quality criteria). Their applicability for various EU and global biodiversity assessments and the need for further development of new indicators and refinement of the existing ones is discussed.
Highlights
Sustainability of marine ecosystems and their services are dependent on marine biodiversity, which is threatened worldwide (Narayanaswamy et al, 2013; Bennett et al, 2015)
We present an overview of the indicator development and refinements in DEVOTES, which were aimed to address some of the identified gaps and further development needs for the phase of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) assessment
Most indicators lack regional targets or quality threshold values, and few have a measure of confidence and a demonstrated link to pressures (Teixeira et al, 2014)
Summary
Sustainability of marine ecosystems and their services are dependent on marine biodiversity, which is threatened worldwide (Narayanaswamy et al, 2013; Bennett et al, 2015). Biodiversity Assessment in Marine Ecosystems setting programs for monitoring and assessing the environmental status of the marine waters. According to MSFD, the status of the marine environment is evaluated using 11 descriptors, that comprise both biodiversity related descriptors (D1, biological diversity; D4, food-webs; and D6, seafloor integrity) and pressure descriptors (D2, non-indigenous species; D3, fisheries; D5, eutrophication; D7, hydrological conditions; D8 and D9, contaminants in the environment and in seafood; D10, litter; D11, energy and noise). These are further detailed in the EU. The descriptor (D1) on biodiversity has the following target to contribute to the achievement of the Good Environmental Status (GES):
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