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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 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).
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.
This page gives a short introduction to the Natura 2000 network and provides an overview of the EEA and ETCs contribution to the network.
Top ten net displacements of land use globally (exports minus imports), with the arrows indicating the direction of product flow. For this trade analysis, the countries of the world were aggregated into 11 regions, color coded on the map. Units are in million gha per year.
DATRAS is an online database of trawl surveys with access to standard data products
The EEA coastline dataset has been created for detailed analysis (e.g.:1/100000) for geographical Europe. The coastline is a hybrid product obtained from satellite imagery from two projects: EUHYDRO (Pan-European hydrographic and drainage database) and GSHHG (A Global Self-consistent, Hierarchical, High-resolution Geography Database), as well as some manual amendments to meet requirements from EU Nature Directives, Water Framework Directive and Marine Strategy Framework Directive. In 2015, several corrections were made in the Kalogeroi Islands and two other Greek little islets, as well as in the peninsula of Porkkala. In this revision from 2017, two big lagoons have been removed from Baltic region, because, according to HELCOM, are freshwater lagoons.
The coverage of ecosystem classes under the EU 'Mapping and Assessment of Ecosystems and their Services' (MAES) framework was affected by change processes between 2006 and 2012, with urbanisation the most dominant process. Urban ecosystems showed the highest net increase both in the EU-28 and in the EEA-39 countries, predominantly at the expense of cropland and grassland. A very slight increase in coverage was observed in forest and woodland, while agricultural ecosystems, both cropland and grassland, continued to decrease. Vulnerable ecosystems such as heathland and sparsely vegetated land (dunes, beaches, sand plains, bare rocks and glaciers) continued to disappear between 2006 and 2012, although the loss of wetlands seems to have levelled off for the first time over the same period. It should be borne in mind, however, that approximately two thirds of European wetlands were lost before the 1990s and their area has subsequently continued to decrease.
Proportional and absolute change in extent and turnover of land cover categories aggregated to relate to MAES ecosystem types in Europe from 2006 to 2012. MAES ecosystem types are: (1) urban; (2) cropland; (3) grassland; (4) woodland and forest; (5) heathland and shrub; (6) sparsely vegetated land; (7) inland wetlands; (8) rivers and lakes; (9) marine inlets and transitional waters; and (10) marine. This indicator is based on photo-interpretation of satellite imagery and gives a 'wall-to-wall' picture of the changes and dynamics in Europe with respect to ecosystems. Additional indicators can be used to further highlight trends in extent and state of each of the ecosystem types mentioned above using computations from other data sources.
Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions — A Roadmap for moving to a competitive low carbon economy in 2050, COM(2011a) 112 final of 08 March 2011.
For references, please go to https://www.eea.europa.eu/themes/biodiversity/dm or scan the QR code.
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