EcApRHA: Applying an ecosystem approach to (sub) regional habitat assessments

The EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) has for main objective to achieve or maintain 'Good Environmental Status' (GES) in European Seas by 2020. The development of common criteria and methods during the first phase of implementation of the directive is essential to ensure consistency and comparability in the determination of GES and, hence, to guide policy makers in shaping future marine monitoring and assessment standards. To this end, a number of criteria and indicators have been notably identified to define GES on the species, population, habitat, and ecosystem levels. The biodiversity theme of MSFD gathers 4 descriptors (D& Biodiversity, D2 Non-indigenous species, D4 Food-webs, D6 Sea-floor integrity) with overlapping data requirements in biodiversity assessments, although the meaning of GES varies for each descriptor. However, MSFD implementation requires scientific and technical developments to conceptually frame biodiversity and to achieve meaningful monitoring and assessment of biodiversity.

The EcApRHA project is a 15 month project co-financed by the EU DG Environment running from December 2015-February 2017. It is co-financed by the EU DG Environment and will be implemented through collaboration of nine partners under the coordination of the OSPAR Secretariat (Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic). 

EcApRHA focuses on overcoming challenges that are identified in the process to deliver regional biodiversity indicators for application of the MSFD for pelagic habitats, benthic habitats and foodwebs. These are challenges in access to and use of data, developing options for improved coordination of monitoring, how to construct regional indicators and undertake assessments of the indicators, as well as how these might fit together across scales and biodiversity components to work towards a more ecosystem approach.

The project aims to deliver:

- improved habitat and food web indicators to contribute to the Intermediate Assessment in 2017. This OSPAR assessment will be acommon regional report for relevant EU Member States to use in their national reporting on the state of the marine environment in their waters under the MSFD; 

- an Action Plan, recommending the steps to be taken by Contracting Parties to address the identified gaps and shortcomings to enable to achieve an ecosystem approach for (sub)regionally coherent habitat assessment.