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Natura 2000 is the key instrument to protect biodiversity in the European Union. It is an ecological network of protected areas, set up to ensure the survival of Europe's most valuable species and habitats. Natura 2000 is based on the 1979 Birds Directive and the 1992 Habitats Directive. This version covers the reporting in 2018.
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Green infrastructure is a strategically planned network of natural and semi-natural areas, which include other environmental features designed and managed to deliver a wide range of ecosystem services. These include water purification, air quality, space for recreation and climate mitigation and adaptation. This network of green (land) and blue (water) spaces can improve environmental conditions and therefore citizens' health and quality of life. It also supports a green economy, creates job opportunities and enhances biodiversity. To maximise the benefits it provides, GI should be an essential component of spatial and physical planning. Developing GI is a key step towards successfully implementing the EU 2020 biodiversity strategy. Target 2 of the strategy requires that ‘by 2020, ecosystems and their services are maintained and enhanced by establishing green infrastructure and restoring at least 15 % of degraded ecosystems.’
Maintaining natural capital is vital for the function of our societies and people’s well-being. A new briefing from the European Environment Agency (EEA), published today, analyses how to plan for green infrastructure and ecosystem restoration, which in turn can enhance biodiversity, support green economy and create job opportunities.
Natura 2000 sites, public forests and riparian corridors: The connectivity backbone of forest green infrastructure
The map indicates, from red to dark blue, the rating of corridors with an increasing number of ecosystem services (i.e. erosion control, crop pollination, water retention, and outdoor recreation) above the average ecosystem services delivery outside Natura 2000 areas at the national scale of Spain.
Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science Lund University Sölvegatan 12 S-223 62 Lund Sweden
Jin, H., Eklundh, L. (2014): A physically based vegetation index for improved monitoring of plant phenology, Remote Sensing, 152, 512 – 525.
The EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020 calls on Member States to carry out a mapping and assessment of ecosystems and their services (MAES, Maes et al., 2013). As such, an EU-wide ecosystem assessment was launched to provide harmonised information on the condition of ecosystems and biodiversity, and their capacity to provide ecosystem services. The assessment will provide data for the final evaluation of the EU biodiversity strategy in 2020. This briefing presents recent progress in mapping broad ecosystem types and their associated habitats at European level.
The EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020 calls on Member States to carry out a mapping and assessment of ecosystems and their services (MAES, Maes et al., 2013). As such, an EU-wide ecosystem assessment was launched to provide harmonised information on the condition of ecosystems and biodiversity, and their capacity to provide ecosystem services. The assessment will provide data for the final evaluation of the EU biodiversity strategy in 2020. This briefing presents recent progress in mapping broad ecosystem types and their associated habitats at European level. This mapping uses spatially explicit land cover information, mostly based on the Copernicus service portfolios, the habitat classification of the European Nature Information System EUNIS (EEA, 2017) and other spatially referenced data sets. The work is also an essential input to the EU-level mapping and assessment of ecosystems and their services following the MAES analytical framework (Maes et al., 2018).
Mapping Europe’s vast land and marine ecosystems is crucial to assessing the health of the continent’s biodiversity and ensuring its future survival. That is why the European Environment Agency (EEA) is currently working on enhancing the data and knowledge of Europe’s ecosystems which will support the European Union’s work on the final evaluation of the EU biodiversity strategy in 2020.
The dataset combines the Copernicus land service portfolio and marine bathymetry and seabed information with the non-spatial EUNIS habitat classification for a better biological characterization of ecosystems across Europe. As such it represents probabilities of EUNIS habitat presence for each MAES ecosystem type.
As a main source of protein, fish stocks and other sea products are renewable resources, which could sustain human needs in the long term — if exploited in an appropriate manner. The overall use of fish and shellfish stocks in Europe currently remains beyond the limit for long-term environmental sustainability. However, the analysis of long time series shows important and recent signs of improvement in the North-East Atlantic Ocean and Baltic Sea. Since the early 2000s, better management of fish and shellfish stocks has contributed to a clear decrease in fishing pressure in these two regional seas, and signs of recovery in the reproductive capacity of several fish and shellfish stocks have started to appear. If these efforts continue, meeting the 2020 objective for healthy fish and shellfish stocks in the North-East Atlantic Ocean and Baltic Sea could be possible based on two of three criteria (i.e. fishing mortality and reproductive capacity). In contrast, there is small likelihood that the 2020 policy objective will be met in the Mediterranean and Black Seas.
This page gives a short introduction to the Natura 2000 network and provides an overview of the EEA contribution to the network.
At the EU level, there has been a decrease in the agricultural nitrogen balance between 2000 and 2015, which is an indication of an improving trend. The main decrease was between 2000 and 2010; between 2010 and 2015 there was no further significant decrease. A country comparison of the average agricultural nitrogen balance for the years 2000-2003 and 2012-2015, shows that for the majority of European countries there was a reduction in the nitrogen balance, reflecting an improving trend. Although the agricultural nitrogen balance is decreasing in most Member States, it is still considered to be unacceptably high in some parts of Europe because of associated impacts on the environment. This is particularly true in western Europe and in some Mediterranean countries. Even in countries with low national averages, there can be regions with high nitrogen loadings because of agricultural intensity, such as livestock density. Further efforts are therefore needed to reduce the balance.
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For references, please go to https://www.eea.europa.eu/themes/biodiversity/dm or scan the QR code.
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