Ecological Quality and biodiversity

There is a lot of international commitments and concerns regarding protection of biodiversity. What does biodiversity mean in the Baltic Sea and HELCOM context and how can it be assessed?

Aims

As part of the HELCOM Baltic Sea Action Plan process, the HELCOM QUALITY project will compile existing national and european-level information and develop assessment tools for species composition and community structure, i.e. biodiversity effects of human-induced processes with the main weight on eutrophication.

The project will provide input to the development of Baltic-wide biodiversity assessment tools, first to the Baltic Sea Action Plan of Ministerial meeting of 2007, and further for a future comprehensive biodiversity assessment.

Background

Biodiversity in environmental assessment

Marine ecosystems can be simplified to three conceptual aspects: quality, quantity and temporal stability (resilience). With an ecosystem approach for management (EAM) these should all be considered when assessing the state of the environment.

While quantity (biomass and productivity) is often related to immediate effects of nutrient pollution, quality is referring to species composition and richness of marine life. Resilience refers to temporal consistency of communities and their adaptability to changes in abiotic and biotic environment.

Quality aspects, such as size and species distribution of coastal fish communities, are often interesting for the general public and related to both quantity and resilience. As central characteristics of ecosystems, quality issues are at the heart of the ecosystem approach: e.g. the EU WFD has a requirement for “good ecological status” in terms of the quality of the biological community but including also the hydrological and the chemical characteristics.

In the present conceptual models to assess eutrophication (e.g. as being developed within the EC Eutrophication Activity), the main weight in describing this ecological quality is on quantity (concentrations, biomass) with little emphasis on the quality: species composition and community structure, i.e. biodiversity.

Biodiversity in HELCOM context

Article 15 of Helsinki Convention urges to conserve natural habitats and biological diversity and to protect ecological processes. Biodiversity has also been emphasised by the 2003 HELCOM and the joint HELCOM/OSPAR Bremen Ministerial Declarations and is an key element in the developing European Marine Strategy.

Biodiversity is affected by multitude of human actions, eutrophication being identified as the main concern in the Baltic Sea while not considering the impacts of hazardous substances, marine transport and fishery as insignificant.

The Baltic Sea as a brackish water body is very different to the other European seas especially concerning the species richness: the Baltic Sea biota consists of a remarkable small number of species making the communities and food webs at the same time simple and vulnerable. For this reason tools to describe biodiversity in the oceanic conditions, developed and presently under development by different international fora, are not applicable in the Baltic Sea. The other European sea showing similarities to the Baltic Sea is the Black Sea.

The assessment of biodiversity is in general at a relatively early stage within all Marine Conventions and specific coordinated monitoring hardly exists.

Contact

QUALITY Project Researcher
Hermanni Backer
Tel: 358 9 6220 2220

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Project funded by European Community 01.10.2005-31.7.2007