Understanding the distribution of economic benefits from improving coastal and marine ecosystems

The study was carried out within the project “Good environmental status through regional coordination and capacity building” (GES-REG) funded by the Central Baltic INTERREG IV A Programme 2007–2013. MC acknowledges the support of the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education and the National Science Centre of Poland (project 2015/19/D/HS4/01972). SS thanks the project “Development of the ships' ballast water management system to reduce biological invasions” (BALMAN, 2015–2017) for funding her work. NH thanks MASTS (HR09011) (www.masts.ac.uk) for funding a part of his work.The ecological status of coastal and marine waterbodies world-wide is threatened by multiple stressors, including nutrient inputs from various sources and increasing occurrences of invasive alien species. These stressors impact the environmental quality of the Baltic Sea. Each Baltic Sea country contributes to the stressors and, at the same time, is affected by their negative impacts on water quality. Knowledge about benefits from improvements in coastal and marine waters is key to assessing public support for policies aimed at achieving such changes. We propose a new approach to account for variability in benefits related to differences in socio-demographics of respondents, by using a structural model of discrete choice. Our method allows to incorporate a wide range of socio-demographics as explanatory variables in conditional multinomial logit models without the risk of collinearity; the model is estimated jointly and hence more statistically efficient than the alternative, typically used approaches. We apply this new technique to a study of the preferences of Latvian citizens towards improvements of the coastal and marine environment quality. We find that overall, Latvians are willing to pay for reducing losses of biodiversity, for improving water quality for recreation by reduced eutrophication, and for reducing new occurrences of invasive alien species. However a significant group within the sample seems not to value environmental improvements in the Baltic Sea, and, thus, is unwilling to support costly measures for achieving such improvements. The structural model of discrete choice reveals substantial heterogeneity among Latvians towards changes in the quality of coastal and marine waters of Latvia.PostprintPeer reviewe

Marine Strategy Framework Directive - Descriptor 2, Non-Indigenous Species, Delivering solid recommendations for setting threshold values for non-indigenous species pressure on European seas

Marine Non-Indigenous Species (NIS) are animals and plants introduced accidently or deliberately into the European seas, originating from other seas of the globe. About 800 marine non-indigenous species (NIS) currently occur in the European Union national marine waters, several of which have negative impacts on marine ecosystem services and biodiversity. Under the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) Descriptor 2 (D2), EU Member States (MSs) need to consider NIS in their marine management strategies. The Descriptor D2 includes one primary criterion (D2C1: new NIS introductions), and two secondary criteria (D2C2 and D2C3). The D2 implementation is characterized by a number of issues and uncertainties which can be applicable to the Descriptor level (e.g. geographical unit of assessment, assessment period, phytoplanktonic, parasitic, oligohaline NIS, etc.), to the primary criterion D2C1 level (e.g. threshold values, cryptogenic, questionable species, etc), and to the secondary criteria D2C2 and D2C3. The current report tackles these issues and provides practical recommendations aiming at a smoother and more efficient implementation of D2 and its criteria at EU level. They constitute a solid operational output which can result in more comparable D2 assessments among MSs and MSFD regions/subregions. When it comes to the policy-side, the current report calls for a number of different categories of NIS to be reported in D2 assessments, pointing the need for the species to be labelled/categorised appropriately in the MSFD reporting by the MSs. These suggestions are proposed to be communicated to the MSFD Working Group of Good Environmental Status (GES) and subsequently to the Marine Strategy Coordination Group (MSCG) of MSFD. Moreover, they can serve as an input for revising the Art. 8 Guidelines

Baseline survey of non-indigenous species in the Baltic Sea ports -Testing and evaluating the HELCOM-OSPAR Port Survey Protocol

Transport and introductions of non-indigenous species (NIS) is perceived as one of the primary threats to the diversity and productivity of the coastal ecosystems worldwide. One of the most important vectors for aquatic organisms is shipping and ports act as key locations for new species arrivals. The Baltic Sea is subject to very intense shipping and as a result facing an increasing load of NIS. Ports are often the first arrival locations for new species and they often offer a variety of potentially hospitable environments. Despite of this vulnerability, there has been no frequent NIS monitoring in place for Baltic Sea ports. The Baltic Sea states, working through HELCOM, have agreed on a Protocol to collect the required information in ports, both for implementing the Ballast Water Management Convention (BWMC) and EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD). Currently, port surveys have been conducted in five Baltic Sea countries in nine ports. Based on the results, the methods appear to function well in the challenging port environments. Furthermore, survey results indicate that ports harbour a variety of NIS, which highlights the need for continuous monitoring. However, non-parametric extrapolators of the species accumulation curves show that more sampling effort should be directed to certain variable ports and to certain species groups. Also, the Protocol sampling did not adequately cover the seasonal dynamics of the biota and the surrounding areas. Therefore, reliable risk assessments for exemptions from the BWMC require including additional data from the area

User experiences of using a spatial analysis tool in collaborative GIS for maritime spatial planning

Maritime spatial planning (MSP) is a decision-making process for managing human activities at sea. Stakeholder participation is critical to MSP processes. Spatial decision support systems (SDSSs) can be effective tools for analyzing problems in MSP, for example, the impact of human activities on marine ecosystems. However, despite the fact that multiple SDSSs have been developed for MSP, they are rarely used in real-world MSP processes. We aim to provide insight into stakeholders' understanding and perception of the appropriateness and completeness of SDSSs in an MSP stakeholder meeting. We studied whether SDSSs can benefit from being integrated into CGIS to support alternative methods for problem exploration and solving in groups. The results show that most, but not all, stakeholders understood well or fairly well what the tool does and how to use it, and agreed that the tool was appropriate and had the necessary requirements for problem solving. The results also show that problem exploration and solving with an SDSS in groups can benefit from the tool being integrated into a CGIS. Further research is needed to find effective solutions to overcome stakeholders' challenges in using GIS, and to develop flexible solutions that enable alternative problem-solving methods

Baseline survey of non-indigenous species in the Baltic Sea ports -Testing and evaluating the HELCOM-OSPAR Port Survey Protocol

Transport and introductions of non-indigenous species (NIS) is perceived as one of the primary threats to the diversity and productivity of the coastal ecosystems worldwide. One of the most important vectors for aquatic organisms is shipping and ports act as key locations for new species arrivals. The Baltic Sea is subject to very intense shipping and as a result facing an increasing load of NIS. Ports are often the first arrival locations for new species and they often offer a variety of potentially hospitable environments. Despite of this vulnerability, there has been no frequent NIS monitoring in place for Baltic Sea ports. The Baltic Sea states, working through HELCOM, have agreed on a Protocol to collect the required information in ports, both for implementing the Ballast Water Management Convention (BWMC) and EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD). Currently, port surveys have been conducted in five Baltic Sea countries in nine ports. Based on the results, the methods appear to function well in the challenging port environments. Furthermore, survey results indicate that ports harbour a variety of NIS, which highlights the need for continuous monitoring. However, non-parametric extrapolators of the species accumulation curves show that more sampling effort should be directed to certain variable ports and to certain species groups. Also, the Protocol sampling did not adequately cover the seasonal dynamics of the biota and the surrounding areas. Therefore, reliable risk assessments for exemptions from the BWMC require including additional data from the area

Application of the marine ecosystem services approach in the development of the maritime spatial plan of Latvia

The Maritime Spatial Plan for Internal Waters, Territorial Waters and Economic Exclusive Zone of the Republic of Latvia is a long-term spatial planning document, which defines the permitted uses of the sea and conditions for development. Work on maritime spatial planning (MSP) in Latvia was a novel process from different aspects including incorporation of the concept of ecosystem services (ES) into MSP. In the course of the MSP process, marine ES were mapped and assessed, and impacts of proposed spatial solutions for the use of the sea were assessed. The scope of mapping and assessment of ES was limited by data availability and expert knowledge on marine ecosystems. MSP in Latvia was an open and transparent process with an active involvement of different stakeholder groups. Marine ES assessment results were visualized and used during the public consultations to highlight the marine areas providing the most significant social benefits as well as to facilitate debate about potential impacts arising from proposed uses of the sea. The marine ES approach, in a spatially explicit manner, provided stakeholders and policymakers with a strategic framework to address a complex social–ecological system.EDITED BY Joao Rodrigue