Common Indicator 1: Habitat distributional range & Common Indicator 2: Condition of the habitat’s typical species and communities

Reporter:: SPA/RAC
Geographical scale of the assessment:: Regional, Mediterranean Sea
Contributing countries:
Mid-Term Strategy (MTS) Core Theme:: 2-Biodiversity and Ecosystems
Ecological Objective:: EO1: Biological diversity is maintained or enhanced. The quality and occurrence of coastal and marine habitats and the distribution and abundance of coastal and marine species are in line with prevailing physiographic, hydrographic, geographic and climatic conditions.
IMAP Common Indicator:: Common Indicator 1 (CI1): Habitat distributional range; Common Indicator 2 (CI2): Condition of the habitat’s typical species and communities
Indicator Assessment Factsheet Code:: EO1CI1/EO1CI2

GES Definition (CI1): The habitat is present in all its natural distributional range.

GES Targets (CI1):

State: The ratio Natural / observed distributional range tends to 1.
Pressure: Decrease in the main human causes of the habitat decline.

GES Definition (CI2): The population size and density of the habitat-defining species, and species composition of the community, are within reference conditions ensuring the long-term maintenance of the Habitat.

GES Targets (CI2):

State: No human induced significant deviation of population abundance and density from reference conditions.
State: The species composition shows a positive trend towards reference condition over an increasing proportion of the habitat (for recovering habitats).

Background

Marine habitats are generally defined by physical features and characteristic species. Nonetheless, habitat types are not clearly distinct regions with clear boundaries in nature. Benthic habitats are considered as important drivers of diversity and therefore the modification or loss of habitats are considered as serious threat to marine ecosystems. Due to heterogeneity of habitats and limited available data, the monitoring of habitat status is a great challenge for ecological assessment programmes.

Assessment methods

Assessments of the status and the extension of marine habitats require the adoption of rigorous approaches (in terms of sampling design, selection of appropriate spatial and temporal scales, habitat classification, identification of vulnerable taxa) that can give a good image of the distributional range and the condition of marine systems and of their alteration by pressures from human activities. Following changes in space and time in the occurrence of target species/habitats (e.g. habitat formers) able to indicate the status of the systems, and including the consideration of appropriate control areas should be the way to go.

Results and Status, including trends

The Mediterranean broad scale habitats were modeled using the same approach identified in Emodnet for the western Mediterranean. This consisted in first identifying the benthic assemblages (or groups of assemblages) whose extension is such that they can be portrayed at a broad scale level and then identifying the qualifying environmental factors that can be used to model each assemblage distribution (i.e. substrate classes, depth zones, estimated light reaching the sea bottom). This procedure was feasible because a regional benthic habitat classification scheme based on benthic zonation rules involving biological zones and substrate class combinations exists within the framework of the Barcelona convention (UNEP, 2006) and because the Barcelona Convention habitat categories have been included within the EUNIS 2007-2011 habitat classification scheme

Conclusion

Regional expertise, research and monitoring programmes over the last few decades have tended to concentrate their attention on only a few specific Mediterranean habitats. The exploration of other habitats, such as bioconstructions, from very shallow to the deep-sea should be further supported, with a focus on threats and pressures in order to improve the conservation status as well as the policy assessments.

The shift from Habitat conservation approaches to Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning approaches reflects much better the rationale which sustains the management and conservation of marine ecosystems.
This shift calls for holistic, integrative and ecosystem based approaches, which are still under development and will require a reappraisal of the way we tackle ocean monitoring, assessment and management.

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Biodiversity and Ecosystem (EO 1)