Dr Laurent Guérin1, Dr Anna Lizinska1
1Office Français de La Biodiversité, Dinard, France
Despite the high cultural value and long history of its marine environment, it’s only since the last decade that European countries cooperate, through recent regulations and science-policy processes, to produce common methodological standards dedicated to assess European marine biodiversity, including that of coastal temperate reefs. These new standards aim to assess the European Seas ecological status, in order to guide management measures, which are then assessed through coordinated common and specific monitoring programmes. As several European regulations progressively entered into force in the 21st century, with specific requirements and conservation objectives, the need for better coordination and articulation of the different assessment requirements became more and more obvious, both for policymakers and involved scientists. We present here the very recent improvement and articulation between the different European Union regulations, and through the Regional Sea Conventions, which enable broad-scale and long-term assessments of marine coastal reef biodiversity. As a concrete example, we notably detail the specific assessment of coastal benthic habitats and reefs, exposed to eutrophication and other anthropogenic pressures, as reported to several regulations.
Presentation Slides – Laurent Guérin
Biography:
Laurent Guérin is a marine ecology scientist, notably involved in international works on benthic habitats and non-indigenous species. He and his teams are also involved in and supporting the implementation of marine European directives for 17 years, like the Water Framework Directive and the Marine Strategy Framework Directive. Scientific and technical works are also done through the Regional Seas (OSPAR and Barcelone) committees. The results of these recent works were partly funded by the European Commission via the Nea Panacea research project.
