Benthic Indicator Species Index (BISI) developed for marine habitat types in Natura 2000 areas.

View on the Western Scheldt with the skyline of the harbours of Antwerp – S. Wijnhoven (2016)

Benthic Indicator Species Indices (BISIs) specifically developed for quality evaluations of marine Habitat Directive (HD) habitat types and relevant Natura 2000 areas of the Dutch Delta waters, the Wadden Sea and the coastal zone of the North Sea, are available now. Specifically BISIs have been developed for HD-habitat types H1160, H1130, H1110a, H1140a and H1140b*. BISIs have been developed according to BISI v2 (protocol update in progress), taking dominant ecotopes (defining the main distinguishing communities) as the basis to select indicator species for which internal reference occurrences (as used in the indicator) are calculated surface-ratio based. This allows application of the BISI in similar habitats beyond the current Natura 2000 areas for which the indicator has been elaborated and tested here. The developed BISIs are presented with proposals for monitoring programmes with sufficient power to detect potential quality differences, as much as possible making use of current recurring monitoring activities. Indicator development and suggested monitoring programmes for the Eastern Scheldt (Oosterschelde), Western Scheldt (Westerschelde), Wadden Sea (Waddenzee) including Eems-Dollard and intertidal areas in the coastal zone of the Dutch North Sea, are presented in:

Wijnhoven, S. & Van Avesaath, P.H. (2019). Benthische Indicator Soorten Index (BISI) voor mariene habitattypen in Natura 2000-gebieden. Uitwerking beoordelingsmethodiek inclusief monitoringvoorstel voor mariene habitattypen van de Habitatrichtlijn gelegen in de Deltawateren, het Waddenzeegebied en de kustzone van de Noordzee. Ecoauthor Report Series 2019 – 03, Heinkenszand, the Netherlands.

With Assessment Tools for the developed BISIs in Excel-format available from here. Background information on the calculations and test results as indicated in the report is available on request.

(At the moment the report is only available in Dutch)

*Respectively ‘Large shallow inlets and bays’ (H1160), ‘Estuaries’ (H1130), ‘Sandbanks permanently flooded – tidal area’ (H1110a), ‘Intertidal mud flats and sandbanks – tidal area’ (H1140a), ‘Intertidal mud flats and sandbanks – North Sea coastal zone’ (H1140b).

Platform Marine Monitoring

At May the 22nd I had the opportunity to provide insight in the benthos monitoring programme for the Dutch North Sea at the ‘Exchange day Platform Marine Monitoring 2018’). I gave a presentation focussing on the potential differences in results when making choices in monitoring and evaluation methodologies. Besides I could also present and discuss some of the findings for recent developments in the quality status of sea floor habitats of specific areas in the Dutch North Sea. For those who were there, or others that are interested now; you can find the slides of the presentation here (Sorry, they are in Dutch). All presentations are available from the website of ‘Informatiehuis Marien’.

Living Planet Report – Salty and brackish nature in the Netherlands

Foto: ©Bert Ooms/WWF

WWF – The Netherlands (WNF) has published a nice report showing the recent trends in species richness in amongst others the Dutch North Sea, Wadden Sea and Delta waters. Ecoauthor also made a modest contribution to the interpretation of findings here.

The entire report:‘Wereld Natuur Fonds. 2017. Living Planet Report. Zoute en zilte natuur in Nederland. WNF, Zeist.’ (written in Dutch) can be found here.

Additional information can be found on the website of WNF (www.wnf.nl).

Ecoauthor participated in trinational workshop Doggerbank

Last February the 8th, a trinational workshop on joint monitoring, evaluation and knowledge exchange concerning the Doggerbank was held in Hamburg. With several participants from Germany and the UK, Ecoauthor represented the Dutch government. Although monitoring programmes in the three countries are quite different, it is clear that cooperation will have benefits for each of the countries. As a first step, benthic monitoring data will be exchanged, and the various indicators in use will be applied on each others datasets. The tuning of evaluations should lead to a joint evaluation of the international Doggerbank region in the near future. Also joint monitoring activities are foreseen. doggerbank-monitoring-nl-v060217

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Attention for Ecoauthor work in Newsletter ‘Informatiehuis Marien’

Since several months we are developing a Benthos-based Indicator system for the evaluation of the Dutch North Sea for the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs (EZ) and the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment (I&M). The evaluation tool will specifically be used to report on the quality developments towards the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) and evaluation of management regulations (i.e. fisheries restrictions) in Natura 2000 areas and other areas of special interest. The latest newsletter of the Marine Information and Data Centre (Informatiehuis Marien) has some attention for our work: ‘Measuring with benthic macrofauna‘. (The article is in Dutch).ihm-article

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Ecoauthor has signed Framework Agreement with Rijkswaterstaat

Western Scheldt 2016Ecoauthor is happy that the Framework Agreement Biology concerning Specialist Advice and Methodology Development was awarded to us by Rijkswaterstaat (RWS-CIV, Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment) for a range of competences in the field of Hydrobiology, Ecological Monitoring of Flora & Fauna, and Ecological Mapping. The Agreement is signed for three years. We are looking forward to a fruitful cooperation and are ready to put it in practice.

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