Book Description

This report presents a revised overview of the EEA's EU 2010 biodiversity baseline report. The revision is necessary because the typology of ecosystems used in the 2010 report has since been altered by a working group of biodiversity experts. The EU 2010 biodiversity baseline report examined the state and trends of biodiversity and ecosystem components in the EU-27. The report was structured according to ecosystem types, and looked at eight ecosystem types in total: agroecosystems, grasslands, heath and scrubs, forests, wetlands, lakes and rivers, coastal ecosystems, and marine ecosystems. However, in 2011 a Working Group on Mapping and Assessment of Ecosystems and their Services (MAES WG) was set up under the Common Implementation Framework (CIF), the governance structure to underpin the effective delivery of the EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020. This Working Group ultimately formulated a different typology to the one used in the 2010 EEA report.^The Working Group was set up in order to support Action 5 of the EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020, which called on Member States to map and assess the state of ecosystems and their services in their national territory with the assistance of the European Commission. The first task of MAES WG was to support the development of a coherent analytical framework to be applied by the EU and its Member States in order to ensure consistent approaches in mapping biodiversity. Part of this task was to ensure that a common typology of ecosystems was used across Europe. Based on the work of MAES WG, the European Commission in April 2013 published a discussion paper entitled 'Mapping and Assessment of Ecosystems and their Services: An analytical framework for ecosystem assessments under Action 5 of the EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020'. The discussion paper outlined a new typology of ecosystems, and this new typology was discussed and further refined by MAES WG.^This refined typology has now become the recommended typology for EU biodiversity assessments, and is slightly different from the list of ecosystems used for the EU 2010 biodiversity baseline. The ecosystems used in the refined typology are: urban, cropland, grassland, woodland and forest, heathland and shrub, sparsely vegetated land, wetlands, rivers and lakes, marine inlets and transitional waters, coastal, shelf, open ocean. The EU 2010 biodiversity baseline report was compiled using the best available data. It can therefore still be used as a reference point to support the measurement of progress towards biodiversity targets. But due to the change of typology of ecosystems, the facts and figures provided in the report need to be recalculated to be aligned with the MAES typology. This report provides these necessary recalculations.