Marine Spatial Planning Addressing Climate Effects (MSPACE):Report of Task 1.3 Seabed Habitat Condition Assessment in the UK EEZ

Evaluating the impact of marine resource extraction and sea floor disturbance on seafloor ecosystem function of UK shelf areas is vital to sustainably meet increasing needs for UK marine resource extraction, whilst meeting ambitions for reaching net-zero. Pressures from bottom fishing and aggregate extraction activities that cause physical disturbance to the seabed can have adverse effects on benthic organisms and habitats. This report delivers an assessment for the effect of mobile bottom contacting gear (MBCG) and marine aggregate extraction on soft sediment and OSPAR threatened and/or declining habitats across the UK Economic Exclusion Zone (EEZ) using the Relative Benthic Status (RBS) and the Extent of Physical Disturbance to Benthic Habitats (BH3) indicators currently being used by ICES and OSPAR, respectively, for habitat condition assessments

Marine Spatial Planning Addressing Climate Effects (MSPACE):Report of Task 1.3 Seabed Habitat Condition Assessment in the UK EEZ

Evaluating the impact of marine resource extraction and sea floor disturbance on seafloor ecosystem function of UK shelf areas is vital to sustainably meet increasing needs for UK marine resource extraction, whilst meeting ambitions for reaching net-zero. Pressures from bottom fishing and aggregate extraction activities that cause physical disturbance to the seabed can have adverse effects on benthic organisms and habitats. This report delivers an assessment for the effect of mobile bottom contacting gear (MBCG) and marine aggregate extraction on soft sediment and OSPAR threatened and/or declining habitats across the UK Economic Exclusion Zone (EEZ) using the Relative Benthic Status (RBS) and the Extent of Physical Disturbance to Benthic Habitats (BH3) indicators currently being used by ICES and OSPAR, respectively, for habitat condition assessments

Early-warning system:Climate-smart spatial management of UK fisheries, aquaculture and conservation

Our coast and our ocean are undergoing unprecedented changes as a result of the breakdown of our global climate system. These changes represent a significant challenge to the delivery of marine policy that effectively protects ecosystem health, biodiversity and the communities depending on these resources.2 Creating new, climateadaptive management strategies for these ecosystems, and for economic sectors reliant on them, is thus an ongoing challenge facing diverse arine policy frameworks across the UK Nations. This is compounded by an ever-increasing reliance on marine space to meet our need to transition to greener energy supply and economic growth, which have to be carefully balanced against the pressing need to preserve our marine species and habitats, and their ability to adapt to climate change. Marine planning is a public process to document, consult and set priorities about how we manage and share our marine space.Indeed, across our Nations, marine plans thus far enshrine key policies that set out the ambition to deliver climate change adaptation. As a devolved process, operating at national and regional level, marine planning has the potential to serve a key, harmonizing role. It can bring together our broader marine policy mechanisms to help tackle the impacts of global climate change across our waters. Additionally, because planning is a deeply consultative process, it furtheroffers the potential to ensure the voices of those that are affected by marine plans help shape this journey. In order to harness opportunities for effective marine conservation and economic growth that emerge from spatial variationin the sensitivity of our marine ecosystems to climate change, climate-smart marine plans are necessary. However, key capability gaps have this far hindered the ability of UK Nations to deliver such marine plans; i.e. plans that are truly adaptive to the effects of climate change. In this report, we begin to close these gaps. First, we explore areas where policy mechanisms could be strengthened to deliver on this ambition. Second, we capitalize on world-class UK ocean climate modelling capability, to deliver a climate change assessment for the entire UK EEZ that, for the first time, demonstrates the spatial variation in sensitivity of our marine ecosystems to climate change. Third, we make recommendations about how marine planning could support the management of areas identified as climate change refugia for three key sectors – marine conservation, fisheries and aquaculture. We highlight that these areas could be utilized by future climate-smart policy design, to promote the climate change adaptation of our natural marine ecosystems. Our identification of these areas also offers opportunities for sectoral policy design by highlighting where risk from climate change may be lower for our fishing and aquaculture sectors

Workshop to evaluate proposed assessment methods and how to set thresholds for as-sessing adverse effects on seabed habitats (WKBENTH3).

The Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) requires EU Member States to achieve and maintain good environmental status (GES) across their marine waters. WKBENTH3 convened as a hybrid meeting to evaluate benthic assessment methods and indicators for their potential to meet the criteria described under the MSFD Descriptor 6 (seabed integrity). They evaluated a suite of indicator methods, proposed by participants. Those included five indicator methods de-scribing the ‘Condition of the Benthic Habitat’, primarily linked to D6C5, and six indicator meth-ods for ‘Physical Disturbance on Benthic Habitats’, primarily linked to D6C3. Variants of some of the indicators as well as some other commonly used diversity indices were also assessed. A common dataset with broad regional representation was used to compare and contrast indi-cator performance with 17 benthic invertebrate datasets drawn from a range of pressure gradi-ents (14 over gradients of commercial bottom trawling intensity, 2 over gradients of eutrophica-tion and 1 over a pollution gradient). A meta-analysis of the mean response to trawling across all locations showed that most indicators had, on average, declined at the high trawl impact rel-ative to the baseline and a significant effect of trawling was detected for the indicators Commu-nity Biomass, Species Richness, Fraction of long-lived species, Median longevity, Fraction of sen-tinel species - SoS, Relative Margalef diversity index DM’, Shannon Index and Inverse Simpson. The complementarity of the different indices was computed using Spearman correlation coeffi-cients between each of the indices for all gradients, ordering indicators with Ward’s hierarchical clustering. One of the key findings was the identification of four groups of indices that showed clear patterns of association. Considering the link of indicators to different benthic community properties, WKBENTH3 proposed that the assessment of D6 should be carried out selecting a number of indicators drawn from different cluster groups to ensure that components of diver-sity, species sensitivity and abundance (density and/or biomass – or other proxy linked to benthic habitat functioning) are addressed. WKBENTH3 further ranked model-based benthic sensitivity and impact outputs across broad habitat types (BHTs) in eight different subdivisions in order to contrast indicator responses. The ranking showed a broad congruence, however, every subdivision had variation in ranking of BHTs among indicator methods. Further work is needed to determine the cause of those discrep-ancies and to look more closely at the values and the response curves generated. WKBENTH3 developed a worked example of how to estimate thresholds for GES based on the approach of ‘detectable change’. The approach was applied to each of the different pressure gra-dients and to muddy sand habitats. It was not able to estimate thresholds for all gradients da-tasets as the confidence intervals around some relationships were very wide. Experts highlighted that the assessment of seabed integrity needs to ensure that cross-regional, regional, national and local scale assessments can “talk” to each other and that they are complementarity in terms of what aspects of the ecosystem the respective indicators are capturing and what pressure they are tracking (linked to manageable human activity). Cross-regional assessments will inform whether assessments are measuring the same or similar things, allowing for such crosschecking.ICESPublishedReferee

Workshop to scope assessment methods to set thresholds (WKBENTH2)

The Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) requires Member States to achieve good environmental status (GES) across their marine waters. The EU have requested ICES to advise on methods for assessing adverse effects on seabed habitats, through selection of relevant indicators for the assessment of benthic habitats and seafloor integrity and associated threshold values for GES in relation to Descriptor 6 – Seabed integrity under the MFSD.Two sets of criteria were developed to evaluate indicators and thresholds respectively for evaluation of suitability for assessing GES. 16 indicator and 12 threshold criteria were compiled and weighted by importance. The criteria were designed for evaluation at a subregional or regional level. The scoring for these criteria is meant as a guidance when choosing indicators and thresholds, so failure to meet one criterion will not necessarily prevent the use of the indicator or threshold in an assessment. The framework was evaluated for 6 indicators and for 11 methods for setting thresholds. The criteria were found to be useful for evaluation both indicators and thresholds. The process works most consistently when there are experts in the group on both the criteria themselves and on the indicators and thresholds.The MFSD Descriptor 6 determination of GES needs both a quality threshold (when are seabed habitats in a good state in a specific location) and an extent threshold (proportion of the assessment area that needs to have seabed habitats in good state). Eleven different methods for setting thresholds were identified, of which more are suitable for setting quality than for extent thresholds. Preferred methods identified an ecologically-motivated difference between a good and degraded state, rather than another transition. Quality thresholds based on the lower boundary of the range of natural variation were considered most promising. This approach can be used for most, but not all, indicators.The WK collated a standardized dataset to test the specificity, sensitivity and/or responsiveness of sampling-based benthic indicators to pressure gradients for evaluation by WKBENTH3. Risk-based methods will be evaluated as maps and by scored sensitivity and impact score per MSFD habitat type and subdivision. Participants provided input into the selection of indicators for the compilation of indicators. A template was developed for documenting the characteristics of each indicator to facilitate the evaluation of the indicators