1. Helsinki, Finland, 28-29 November 2016
HELCOM BalticBOOST Workshop on the development of joint principles to define environmental targets for pressures affecting the seabed habitats
Helsinki, Finland, November 2016

2. Aims of the workshop The workshop will:
evaluate results of the project test cases on effects of different human activities and pressures on benthic habitats,
consider and further develop the draft guidelines for setting environmental targets for pressures affecting benthic habitats.

3. Schedule

4. Schedule

5. Context of the workshop
State of the environment decreases
MSFD art 9 GES threshold
Pressure increases
Maximum allowable pressure
MSFD art 10 environmental target
Quantify this level by the pressure parameters
Describe how these can be defined for seabed.

6. Context of the workshop
Revised GES criteria:
D6C1 for the Physical loss of the seabed (including intertidal areas):
Spatial extent and distribution of physical loss (permanent change) of the natural seabed.
D6C2 for the Physical disturbance of the seabed (including intertidal areas):
Spatial extent and distribution of physical disturbance pressures on the seabed.
D6C3 for the Benthic broad habitat types or other habitat types:
Spatial extent of each habitat type which is adversely affected, through change in its biotic and abiotic structure and its functions (e.g. through changes in species composition and their relative abundance, absence of particularly sensitive or fragile species or species providing a key function, size structure of species), by physical disturbance.
Member States shall establish threshold values for the adverse effects of physical disturbance through regional or subregional cooperation.

7. Context of the workshop
MSFD Annex III (revised), Table 2 a:
Physical disturbance to seabed (temporary or reversible)
GES Decision (revised):
Physical disturbances from different human activities shall be assessed (such as bottom-trawling fishing)
Physical disturbance shall be understood as a change to the seabed which can be restored if the activity causing the disturbance pressure ceases.
Physical loss (due to permanent change of seabed substrate or morphology and to extraction of seabed substrate)
Permanent changes to the seabed from different human activities shall be assessed (including permanent changes to natural seabed substrate or morphology via physical restructuring, infrastructure developments and loss of substrate via extraction of the seabed materials);
Physical loss shall be understood as a permanent change to the seabed which has lasted or is expected to last for a period of two reporting cycles (12 years) or more.
Changes to hydrological conditions

8. What is ’physical disturbance’?
Previous GES Decision: siltation, smothering, abrasion
Revised GES Decision: recoverable in <12 years, bottom-trawling

9. What is ’physical disturbance’?
In order to make the D6C2 and D6C3 assessments, one needs to combine data from different more specific disturbance pressures which are
measured on the basis of human activities,
represent different pressures,
quantified by different metrics.
The HELCOM approach to do this:
Make GIS layers of human activities causing ’physical disturbance’.
Normalize the pressure intensity between 0-1.
Estimate the magnitude of pressure and impacts caused by each human activity.
Rank and categorize the pressures caused by each human activity.
Use the categories to downweight the less significant data layers.
Sum the weighted data layers to make a single ’physical disturbance data layer’.

10. Can we find evidence for environmental targets?
The GES criterion D6C3 requires a threshold (≈ an environmental target).
The BalticBOOST case studies can possibly give guidance to this!
Guidelines to the case study discussions:
Which pressures were studied?
Were negative effects on benthic features quantified?
Is there evidence for any thresholds?
Other results: recovery? spatial effects? influencing environmental conditions?