EUROPEAN TOPIC CENTRE ON BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY
Report on test results using Art 17 reporting data and
existing datasets towards an assessment of ecosystems
Preliminary results
EEA project manager: Valérie Laporte
ETC/BD task manager: Sophie Conde
ETC/BD task: 1.2.2.B.1 Follow up of Biodiversity and Ecosystem assessment processes
Document date: 12/12/2012, revised: 20/02/2013
Authors: Dietmar Moser & Thomas Ellmauer (Umweltbundesamt GmbH)
The European Topic Centre on Biological Diversity (ETC/BD) is a consortium of nine organisations
under a Framework Partnership Agreement with the European Environment Agency
NCA-CR ECNC GDNAP-TR ILE-SAS ISPRA JNCC MNHN SLU UBA-V
Conservation Status Accounting
Content
INTRODUCTION
2
PREPARATION OF ARTICLE 17 REPORTING DATA
2
TESTING DIFFERENT METHODS FOR ACCOUNTING
3
RESULTS
3
Forest Ecosystems
5
Agro-Ecosystems
6
Grassland Ecosystems
7
Wetland Ecosystems
8
Freshwater Ecosystems
9
Mountain Ecosystems
10
Rock and Scree Ecosystems
11
Ice, Snow and Polar Ecosystems
12
Coastal Ecosystems
13
CONCLUSIONS
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REFERENCES
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Conservation Status Accounting
Introduction
The EU Biodiversity Strategy 2020 in its Action 5 of Target 2 requires the improvement
of the knowledge of ecosystems and their services by 2014. The European
Environment Agency and its Topic Centre on Biodiversity will support Member States
in enhancing the knowledge on ecosystems. This report aims to test methods for
assessing the status of ecosystems based on conservation status data.
Considering data availability, it seems to be obvious that evaluation of status of
ecosystems can partly rely on the conservation status of Annex I habitats and Annex II
and IV species of Habitats Directive which has been reported by Member States under
Article 17. These features are only part of the full ecosystem but their conservation
status can give a signal of the status of the full ecosystem. Using Article 17 data it was
therefore tested whether conservation status accounting could be used for analyzing
the conservation status of ecosystems on a grid basis. Habitat types and species of the
Annexes have been assigned therefore to different ecosystem types.
Since habitat types and species do not cover the whole ecosystem, it was additionally
tested whether evaluation of the “rest” of the ecosystem can be completed using
other “direct or indirect” datasets.
In 2011, a first analysis focused on freshwater ecosystems was achieved long this
approach, then in 2012 on forests. Initially a test on grasslands was expected but due
to lack of datasets to be used in parallel with the Article 17 data, the work was
withdrawn. Instead, it was requested to map all ecosystems with the same approach
to get preliminary pictures knowing there was not time to add analysis with other
datasets. This is the reason why this document must be taken as preliminary results
which can be completed in the future when possible.
Preparation of Article 17 reporting data
1. We gridded the distribution maps of species and habitat types to a reference grid
with a resolution of ca. 10x10 km. Distribution maps, conservation status information
and reference grids were provided by the ETC/BD. Since the reference grids for
habitats and species were not identically for some countries we assigned the species
grid to the habitat grid by means of largest area, i.e. a certain species grid cell was
assigned to that habitat grid cell which shared the largest intersect area.
2. We selected habitats and species for ecosystem types according to the reference
lists provided by the ETC/BD (Halada et al. 2010). From this species list we only
considered those species, for which the ecosystem is indicated as preferred habitat.
3. The conservation status information was transferred in an ordinal scale: FV = 1, U1 = 2
and U3 = 3.
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Testing different methods for accounting
In order to achieve an overall figure of the conservation status of an ecosystem per
grid cell we tested the subsequent methods for freshwater (Ellmauer & Moser 2011)
and for forest ecosystems (Moser & Ellmauer 2012):
Mean: the number of occurrences of the conservation status categories have been
multiplied with the assigned numeric value. After adding them up they have been
divided by the counts of habitats and species.
Weighted Mean: Taking into account that habitat types give a more integrative picture
of the conservation status of ecosystems than species, they are regarded more
important than species. Therefore the values for habitat types have been multiplied by
2 and were then summed up with the species values per grid divided by the counts of
occurring habitats and species.
Logical combination: In order to aggregate one value of conservation status for a grid
the subsequent logic has been applied:



Favourable: more than 70% of occurrences in the grid cell have been assessed FV
Unfavourable bad: more than 50% of assessments are in category U2 and less than 25%
in FV
Unfavourable inadequate: all other combinations
The three methods have been applied and compared in 2011. To find out which of them
is the most appropriate information from Natura 2000 Standard Data Forms on
freshwater ecosystems as well as inventories which also cover freshwater ecosystems
(floodplain inventory [Lazowski et al. 2011] and mire inventory, [Steiner 1992]) and
data on the naturalness of forest ecosystems (hemeroby) from Austria (Grabherr et al.
1998) have been used for testing the results of selected cells.
Preliminary results
Forests: Correlation analysis revealed that real data on status of ecosystems are
correlating best with the mean conservation status of habitat types (Moser & Ellmauer
2012). However the results of conservation status accounting are not convincing. There
is a comparative low, however statistically significant (p < 0.01) correlation between
the mean forest habitats conclusion and the hemerobic state of forests. This indicates
that the mean Article 17 habitat conclusion for forest habitat types is indeed related to
the hemerobic state of forests. Regions which have been classified as relative
ahemerobic (i.e. natural) trend to have forest types in a more favourable state.
Grasslands: The Pearson correlation coefficient between the average cell based
conservation status for grassland habitats and the area of HNV-habitats is lower than
0.15 and far from significant for the Austrian continental and alpine regions. Similarly
all other cell based conservation stati (grassland species as well as the combination of
grassland species and habitats) are not significantly related to HNV area, neither for
Austria nor for the Czech Republic, which has also been tested.
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All ecosystems: Accounting of conservation status throughout the whole European
Union demonstrates the inconsistency of Article 17 data between Member States.
Maps of all ecosystem types in first place display the national boarders instead of
discontinuous ecosystem stati. Thus the interpretation of ecosystem stati very
properly might be valid on national scale only.
Habitats vs. Species: Since habitat types can be linked to ecosystems quite clearly
conservation status accounting of habitats at least refers to the respective ecosystem
directly. Thus the occurrence of related habitat types indicates the occurrence of the
ecosystem.
In contrast to that species in many cases are not restricted to one ecosystem only.
Consequently the occurrence of species not always demonstrates the presence of the
ecosystem in question.
This situation could be demonstrated by overlaying the forest layer derived from
CORINE with the distribution of forest species (see Moser & Ellmauer 2012).
The same can be observed e.g. in the figures of costal ecosystems (Figure 9). Habitat
types only occur in costal zones whereas “coastal species” are widely distributed over
Europe.
The subsequent maps in Figures 1-9 show the results of the cell based conservation
status calculations throughout the EU 25 for different ecosystem types.
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Forest Ecosystems
Figure 1: Left column: mean cell based conservation status for forest habitat types and
species.
Right column: number of available forest habitat types and species per grid cell.
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Agro-Ecosystems
Figure 2: Left column: mean cell based conservation status for agriculture habitat types and species.
Right column: number of available agriculture habitat types and species per grid cell.
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Grassland Ecosystems
Figure 3: Left column: mean cell based conservation status for grassland habitat types and species.
Right column: number of available grassland habitat types and species per grid cell.
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Wetland Ecosystems
Figure 4: Left column: mean cell based conservation status for wetland habitat types and species.
Right column: number of available wetland habitat types and species per grid cell.
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Freshwater Ecosystems
Figure 5: Left column: mean cell based conservation status for freshwater habitat types and species.
Right column: number of available freshwater habitat types and species per grid cell.
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Mountain Ecosystems
Figure 6: Left column: mean cell based conservation status for mountain habitat types and species.
Right column: number of available mountain habitat types and species per grid cell.
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Rock and Scree Ecosystems
Figure 7: Left column: mean cell based conservation status for rocks and screes habitat types and species.
Right column: number of available rocks and screes habitat types and species per grid cell.
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Ice, Snow and Polar Ecosystems
Figure 8: Left column: mean cell based conservation status for ice, snow and polar habitat types and
species. Right column: number of available ice, snow and polar habitat types and species per grid cell.
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Coastal Ecosystems
Figure 9: Left column: mean cell based conservation status for costal habitat types and species.
Right column: number of available costal habitat types and species per grid cell.
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References
Ellmauer, T. & Moser, D. (2011): Conservation Status Accounting for Freshwater
Ecosystems. Umweltbundesamt Vienna on behalf of ETC/BD.
Grabherr, G.; Koch, G.; Kirchmeir, H. & Reiter, K. (1998): Hemerobie österreichischer
Waldökosysteme. Veröff. des Österr. MaB-Programms, Vienna 493pp.
Halada, L.; Gajdos, P. & Oszlanyi, J. (2010): Links between species listed in Annex II and
Annex IV of the Habitat Directive and habitat types. 53pp.
Lazowski, W.; Schwarz, U.; Essl, F.; Götzl, M.; Peterseil, J. & Egger, G. (2011):
Aueninventar Österreich. Bericht zur bundesweiten Übersicht der Auenobjekte.
Lebensministerium, Wien.
Moser, D. & Ellmauer, T. (2012): Test on Conservation Status Accounting for Forest
Ecosystems. Umweltbundesamt Vienna on behalf of ETC/BD.
Steiner, G.M. (1992): Österreichischer Moorschutzkatalog. Bundesministerium f.
Umwelt, Jugend u. Familie, Grüne Reihe 1: 509pp.
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