Marine Biodiversity Monitoring in Europe

MarBioME aims to provide a review and appraisal of the current status of the Marine Biodiversity Monitoring in the European Union (EU) and adjacent waters (including actors, roles, infrastructures and methodologies).  The review will be conducted from the perspective of supporting the implementation of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive as well as other relevant EU legislation on marine biodiversity. In the context of the European Green Deal, the Mission Restore our Ocean and Waters by 2030 presents the specific objective of protecting and restoring marine and freshwater ecosystems and biodiversity. Achieving this objective requires representative biodiversity data to inform policies and assess targets. Therefore, Member States are implementing monitoring programmes and collaborating at the regional and EU level to ensure that monitoring methods are consistent to facilitate comparability of monitoring results and ensure that transboundary impacts and features are considered. For this study, marine biodiversity monitoring is understood in a wide sense as suggested by Zampoukas et al. 2014 to encompass:

“all substantive arrangements for carrying out monitoring, including general guidance with cross-cutting concepts, monitoring strategies, monitoring guidelines, data reporting and data handling arrangements. Monitoring programs include several scheduled and coordinated activities to provide the data needed for the ongoing assessment of environmental status and related environmental targets”, using sea surveys, remote sensing (i.e., teledetection), ferry boxes, data mining, or any other way of obtaining marine information on a routine or specific basis.”

This review will be using the framework and tools developed by: H2020 EuroSea - a research and innovation project to improve the European ocean observing and forecasting system in a global context, delivering ocean observations and forecasts to advance scientific knowledge about ocean climate, marine ecosystems and their vulnerability to human impacts and to demonstrate the importance of the ocean to an economically viable and healthy society;  and EuropaBON - a collaborative research innovation action that is designing a European biodiversity monitoring system. In addition, all the information collected in this review will be fed to the EuropaBON initiative, which also covers terrestrial and freshwater biodiversity monitoring. The AIR Centre hosts the Secretariat of the Marine Biodiversity Observation Network (MBON) and together they coordinate the MarBioME study. Contacts: Joana Soares Executive Secretary - Marine Biodiversity Observation Network | Project Officer - Atlantic International Research Centre Email: joana.soares@aircentre.org Mobile: +351 914 315 341 MarBioME is funded under a EC Service Contract (RTD-2021-MV-11 LC-01748345),  and that the opinions expressed are those of the contractor only and do not represent the contracting authority’s official position. MarBioME Overview and assessment of the current state of Marine Biodiversity Monitoring in the European Union and adjacent marine waters Publication metadata MarBioME (Marine Biodiversity Monitoring study in Europe) provides an extensive overview and appraisal of the status of Marine Biodiversity Monitoring in the European Union (EU) and adjacent waters (including actors, roles, infrastructures and methodologies). The review was conducted to support the implementation of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) and other relevant EU legislation on marine biodiversity and is of interest to a vast community of scientists and public authorities The publication falls under Studies and reports.