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Mapping and Assessment of Ecosystems and their Services (MAES)

Europe’s ecosystems, on which we depend for food, timber, clean air, clean water, climate regulation and recreation, suffer from unrelenting pressures caused by intensive land or sea use, climate change, pollution, overexploitation and invasive alien species. Ensuring that ecosystems achieve or maintain a healthy state or a good condition is thus a key requirement to secure the sustainability of human activities and human well-being .
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Agroecosystems

Agroecosystems, are defined as communities of plants and animals interacting with their physical and chemical environments that have been modified by people to produce food, fibre, fuel and other products for human consumption and processing (Maes, 2018).
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Urban Ecosystems

Urban ecosystems are cities and the surrounding, socio-ecological systems where most people live (Maes, et. al. 2016). They are very peculiar ecosystem types: they are almost completely artificial but they include, in different proportions, all other ecosystem types (forests, lakes and rivers and agricultural areas can all be part of urban fringe) and they are strongly influenced by human activities.
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Wetlands

Wetlands, as defined by the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance (Ramsar, 197166), include a wide variety of inland habitats and other marine areas no deeper than six meters at low tide.
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Rivers and Lakes

Rivers ecosystems are characterised by running water (lotic habitats) while lakes ecosystems by standing waters (lentic habitats). The interfaces between water bodies and their catchment, including riparian zones, floodplains, and lakeshores are also an important part of the freshwater ecosystem.
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Marine

Europe’s seas and oceans host the largest range of ecosystems in the entire European Union. They are hotspots of global biodiversity and provide our citizens with a steady flow of essential goods (e.g. food) and services (e.g. climate regulation).
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Forest

Forests are the largest terrestrial ecosystem in the EU-28 covering around 16,131 million ha (FOREST EUROPE 2015b), corresponding to 38% of the EU-28’s land area, hosting a dominant part of Europe’s terrestrial biodiversity, and contributing significantly to climate change mitigation.
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Heathlands, shrubs and sparsely vegetated lands

Heathlands and shrubs are dominated by small woody plants often in combination with herbs, and sometimes with a large contingent of mosses, liverworts and lichens. They are distributed across all the biogeographic regions of Europe from Mediterranean to boreal regions and lowlands to high altitudes.
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Ecosystem accounting

Protecting ecosystems and biodiversity are key policy targets in the EU’s biodiversity strategy for 2030 and the European Green Deal. EU and national policy makers require information on the extent and condition of ecosystems to improve their management. This page presents the EEA’s work on ecosystem accounting, developed within the European Commission project on accounting for ecosystems and their services EU INCA .
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Ecosystems and their services

Ecosystems are living systems that cover the entire surface of the earth (land and water). The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD, UN, 1992) defines ecosystems as: "a dynamic complex of plant, animal and micro-organism communities and their non-living environment interacting as a functional unit".
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Other biodiversity data catalogues

This page presents selected data catalogues and infrastructures offering reference data related to biodiversity in Europe, as developed and managed by BISE key partners, other relevant organisations and projects. The list will constantly increase and be kept up to date.
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Explore Natura 2000

Natura 2000 is a network of core breeding and resting sites for rare and threatened species, and some rare natural habitat types which are protected in their own right. It stretches across all 27 EU countries, both on land and at sea. The aim of the network is to ensure the long-term survival of Europe's most valuable and threatened species and habitats, listed under both the Birds Directive and the Habitats Directive.
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Introduction

All around the world, human activities pose a severe threat to the remaining natural heritage. Therefore, it is essential to protect intact ecosystems and landscapes, including their diversity of species and habitats.
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Coverage & representativity

European protected areas increased in the last decades, covering over 1.84 million km² of land and sea. With an area of just over 1 million km², the central driver behind this achievement is the Natura 2000 network. On national level, countries exhibit quite distinct approaches in protected area designations and priority setting.
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Size

While the number of terrestrial protected areas in Europe is very high (over 130 000), their average size is quite low in comparison to other regions of the world. This largely reflects the high degree of fragmentation arising from agriculture, transport and urban development in Europe.
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Connectivity

Due to its high landscape fragmentation, European protected areas are in special need for targeted transboundary connectivity. Compared to other regions of the world, European protected areas already show particularly high connectivity, however, more action is necessary to achieve a free flowing nature network for Europe.
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Protected Species & Habitats

Many European habitats and species as well as all birds naturally occurring in Europe are covered by the EU Birds and Habitats Directives. As one its the central objectives, the Natura 2000 network aims to protect comprise these 233 habitats, 1 389 non-bird species and the over 460 wild birds.
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Management

Adequate site management and targeted measures are key factors for successful conservation. Current analyses show, however, that while protection is increasingly secured on paper, the progress on improving the management and assessing the effectiveness of measures has been rather low.
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Future

The protection of European nature has advanced substantially in the past years. Ongoing shortcomings involve the protection of offshore waters and some ecosystem types as well as the implementation of effective management plans and its monitoring. Thus, ambitious action is needed to achieve the targets to 2030 set by the EU and the CBD
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Protected areas-archived

This Digital Report provides a comprehensive overview of the current state of protected areas in Europe and aims to assist policy makers and the wider public in understanding protected areas in Europe.
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Coverage and representativeness

Since the early 1900s, there has been a continued increase in the coverage of protected areas in Europe on land and at sea. As of 2022, there are over 142,000 protected areas in the 38 EEA member countries. Within the EU27 there are over 134,000 protected areas covering 1.077 million km² on land and approx. 612,000 km² in the marine realm.
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Designation and management

Protected area designation is the first important step towards achieving desired conservation objectives, but the adequate site management and targeted measures are the key factors for successful conservation. Designation of protected areas can be based on national legislation or on EU legislation, as is the case with Natura 2000 sites.
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Protected Areas

Nature conservation activities play a key role in halting biodiversity lossand reducing pressure on ecosystems. A fundamental conservation measure targeting species and habitats as well as broader ecosystem functions and services is the designation of protected areas.
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Explore Natura 2000

Natura 2000 is a network of core breeding and resting sites for rare and threatened species, and some rare natural habitat types which are protected in their own right. It stretches across all 27 EU countries, both on land and at sea. The aim of the network is to ensure the long-term survival of Europe's most valuable and threatened species and habitats, listed under both the Birds Directive and the Habitats Directive.
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Species

Europe has a rich diversity of wild plant and animal species many of which are unique to this continent and exist nowhere else in the world. On this page we provide a general overview about species conservation in Europe.
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Forests

At least 79 200 square kilometres of forest habitats protected under Annex I of the Habitats Directive need to be restored
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Marine habitats

At least 34 800 square kilometres of marine habitats protected under Annex I of the Habitats Directive need to be restored
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Habitat types distribution

This data viewer provides information about distribution (maps) and areas (distribution and surface) of habitat types from Annex I of the Habitats Directive. UnderArticle17of the Habitats Directive, Member States report every six years on the status and trends of habitats and species. This includes distribution maps – presence/absence – on a 10 km x 10 km grid and surface areas for each of the 233 Annex I habitat types; the dashboards include information reported in 2019, corresponding to the 2013-2018 period.
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Habitat types distribution and areas (EU27)

This data viewer provides information about distribution (maps) and areas (distribution and surface) of habitat types from Annex I of the Habitats Directive. UnderArticle17of the Habitats Directive, Member States report every six years on the status and trends of habitats and species. This includes distribution maps – presence/absence – on a 10 km x 10 km grid and surface areas for each of the 233 Annex I habitat types; the dashboards include information reported in 2019, corresponding to the 2013-2018 period.
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Habitats

This page contains information on habitats and European classifications and typologies. The term “habitat” has several meanings. In ecology it means either the area and resources used by a particular species (the habitat of a species) or an assemblage of animals and plants together with their abiotic environment. A habitat or a group of related habitats can be considered an ecosystem.
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Countries

This page contains a series of country profiles with data on protected areas, protected species and habitats, ecosystems. It contrasts data on coverage and overlaps between networks of protected areas under national law as well as Natura 2000, shows details on the extent and size of protection as well as the protection system and conservation status of taxa and habitats.
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Methodological report

Current methodological report outlines the work carried out for developing ecosystem accounts in Statistics Estonia in 2020 and in the first half of 2021. Current work was built on obtained experiences of the experimental work carried out in Estonia in 2019 and work done elsewhere as well as methodological guidance provided by UN SEEA E(E)A1. Methodological development was assisted by the experts of Statistics Netherlands.
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Europe's Biodiversity

This section digs into the European Biodiversity, by providing an overview on its ecosystems, habitats, species and their official European and international classifications. This section also provides summaries and key information about the status of Europe's nature, ongoing pressures, measures for biodiversity protection and restoration. In most of the cases, the sources are data and information reported by Member States under legislative reporting obligations and the outcomes of the experts’ assessments.
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Threats & pressures

Human activities are reshaping biological communities and affecting ecosystem functioning across the Earth. Climate change, land use change and habitat fragmentation, overexploitation, pollution and invasive alien species have been recognized as the most important and widespread direct anthropogenic causes of biodiversity change (IPBES, 2019).
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Climate change

Climate change impacts biodiversity through complex interactions among species and between species and their habitats .
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Invasive species

About 10,000 alien species have been registered in Europe. Some of these species were introduced on purpose and remain economically important. However, a proportion of the alien species established cause significant damage to native biodiversity and can be classified as invasive alien species according to the Convention on Biological Diversity.
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Land use change

Human land use , and its influence on land cover , is a major driver of the distribution and functioning of ecosystems , and thus in the delivery of ecosystem services.
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Overexploitation

The unsustainable use of natural resources and overexploitation, which occurs when harvesting exceeds reproduction of wild plant and animal species, continues to be a major threat to biodiversity.
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Pollution

All forms of pollution pose a serious threat to biodiversity, but in particular nutrient loading , primarily of nitrogen and phosphorus, which is a major and increasing cause of biodiversity loss and ecosystem dysfunction.
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Green infrastructure

The concept of green infrastructure (GI) falls under the umbrella of nature-based solutions and can play a key role in addressing the climate and nature crisis while bringing other benefits to people
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