European marine waters are subject to multiple human and climate-related pressures, whose effects can interact and cascade through ecosystems. Under the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD), Member States are required to achieve or maintain Good Environmental Status (GES) of their marine waters. GES considers the overall condition of marine ecosystems across biodiversity, food webs, eutrophication, seafloor integrity, contaminants, marine litter and other pressures. Assessing and monitoring it effectively, therefore, requires moving beyond individual pressures to understand their combined effects on the whole ecosystem, its functioning and the related services.
This alliance brings together two European Commission projects GES4SEAS and BIOGEOSea and two ESA projects: MiTHo (Multiple THreats on Ocean health) initiative and a new ESA project JEE4GES (Joint ESA-EC Activity for the Evaluation of marine Good Environmental Status under Multiple Human Pressures).
GES4SEAS develops an ecosystem-based framework and toolbox for assessing cumulative impacts, environmental status and ecosystem services, tested across 11 Learning Sites in European regional seas and the French Polynesia. MiTHo complements this work with Earth Observation-based information on multiple climate and anthropogenic stressors, combining satellite products with in-situ and modelled observations to develop cumulative hazard indicators for global and regional seas. The two projects provide complementary building blocks for moving from observing pressures to assessing their consequences for ecosystem health and GES.
Concrete results demonstrate the potential of this dual data – and process- driven approach; GES4SEAS has developed Tikta, a publicly available environment integrating cumulative effects assessment, environmental-status evaluation and spatial analysis, including scenario analysis to explore the effects of reducing individual pressures; MiTHo has developed EO-based cumulative hazard products from different environmental (physical and biogeochemical) variables, as well as methods to reconstruct dissolved-oxygen profiles from satellite, in-situ and model data. Its Adriatic Sea studies have also used satellite observations to reveal relationships between Po River discharge, suspended matter and chlorophyll dynamics, providing evidence relevant to the assessment of pressures affecting marine environmental status.
In the new JEE4GES project, cumulative Hazards Indicators developed within MiTHO are now integrated within the GES4SEAS developed Tikta toolbox.
BioGeoSea is designed to advance the observation, validation, and modeling of biogeochemical Essential Ocean Variables (BGC EOVs). Interacting with EC-BIOGEOSea, JEE4GES will deliver reliable, high-quality information on oxygen in the Mediterranean Sea, a key Essential Ocean Variable that will be integrated into Global Ocean O2 database in support of the global efforts towards Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) and improved understanding of environmental status of the ocean.
Together, these capabilities can support three questions central to marine management: where multiple pressures are concentrated, which ecosystem components and services are most affected, and which pressure-reduction measures offer the greatest potential benefit. In this way, the alliance connects wide-area observation of marine hazards with ecosystem-based assessment and the exploration of management scenarios relevant to the Good Environmental Status.
