Mapping and Assessment of Ecosystems and their Services (MAES)

Why we need to assess the EU ecosystem condition

Spatially-explicit mapping is required to capture different gradients and variations of the relevant components, in space and time, affecting ecosystem function (Maes et al., 2014). The assessment of ecosystem condition provides information about its capability to continuously provide services for human well-being. This knowledge is essential to document the on-going loss and degradation of ecosystems and their services, the subsequent socio-economic impacts, and the identification of pathways towards sustainable development, in order to maintain the delivery of services. As such, ecosystem assessments provide the input for decision-making by addressing and integrating basic information to sectoral policies, i.e. mainly, territorial planning, nature protection, agriculture, forestry, freshwater, marine, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and air pollution reduction.

What is ecosystem condition?

The physical, chemical and biological condition or quality of an ecosystem at a particular point in time.

How do you measure this condition?

•       Abiotic quality (air, water, soil quality)

•       Composition (species/habitat diversity and abundance)

•       Structure (biomass, tree density, …)

•       Functions (productivity, …)

•       Landscape (coherence)

What ecosystems make up the EU?

The EU is covered by 45 ecosystems which are grouped into 10 main types on land and 1 main type in the marine. In the marine there are 30 ecosystems grouped under the heading of Marine habitats, on land 45 ecosystems are grouped into 6 main types: Urban, Agroecosystems (Grasslands and Cropland), Forest, Wetlands, Heathlands and Rivers and Lakes.

Mapping and Assessment of Ecosystems and their Services: An EU ecosystem assessment

In 2020 the European Commission published the Mapping and Assessment of Ecosystems and their Services: An EU ecosystem assessment report. The report gives an assessment of the key ecosystems in the EU, evaluates the EU 2020 biodiversity targets and provides a baseline for the 2030 biodiversity policy and EU nature restoration plan.

Design of the assessment

Main key findings and conclusions of the report

The report presents an analysis of the pressures and condition of terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems using a single, comparable methodology based on European data on trends of pressures and condition relative to the policy baseline 2010.

The following main conclusions are drawn:

• Pressures on ecosystems exhibit different trends.
• Land take, atmospheric emissions of air pollutants and critical loads of nitrogen are decreasing but the absolute values of all these pressures remain too high.
• Impacts from climate change on ecosystems are increasing.
• Invasive alien species of union concern are observed in all ecosystems, but their impact is particularly high in urban ecosystems and grasslands.
• Pressures from overfishing activities and marine pollution are still high.
• In the long term, air and freshwater quality is improving.
• In forests and agroecosystems, which represent over 80% of the EU territory, there are improvements in structural condition indicators (biomass, deadwood, area under organic farming) relative to the baseline year 2010 but some key bio-indicators such as tree-crown defoliation continue to increase. This indicates that ecosystem condition is not improving.
• Species-related indicators show no progress or further declines, particularly in agroecosystems.

Reporting at the national level

Target 2 Action 5 of the EU biodiversity strategy to 2020 stated that "Member States, with the assistance of the Commission, will map and assess the state of ecosystems and their services in their national territory by 2014, assess the economic value of such services, and promote the integration of these values into accounting and reporting systems at EU and national level by 2020." In order to deliver Action 5 the Working Group MAES (Mapping and Assessment of Ecosystems and their Services) was established in 2012 under the Common Implementation Framework (CIF). Members of the group provide updates on progress in their countries twice a year and a barometer is updated accordingly.  

Outlook

More efforts are needed to bend the curve of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation and to put ecosystems on a path to recovery. The progress that is made in certain areas such as pollution reduction, increasing air and water quality, increasing share of organic farming, the expansion of forests, and the efforts to maintain marine fish stocks at sustainable levels show that a persistent implementation of policies can be effective. These successes should encourage us to act now and to put forward an ambitious plan for the restoration of Europe’s ecosystems.

Related resources

• Web page of the European Commmission on Ecosystem Assessment

• ESMERALDA project