Marine Benthic Habitats Monitoring
The UK now has multiple national and international requirements
for marine biodiversity monitoring and assessment, and it is
primarily the
EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive which requires
monitoring programmes to be in place across the whole marine
environment. As part of the UK-wide Marine Biodiversity Monitoring
R&D Programme, whose overarching aim is to develop advice on
monitoring options marine biodiversity within UK territorial and
offshore waters, JNCC are developing options for monitoring of
benthic habitats in the wider environment outside of protected
sites, as well as within them.
In practice, developing advice on monitoring
options means that JNCC has been asked by UK Governments to present
them with different ways in which monitoring of benthic habitats
could be tackled in order to fulfil our numerous requirements.
Development of monitoring in the wider benthic environment is very
challenging because the area in which we work is so large, the
benthic habitats within it are so diverse and understanding of the
most effective indicators and tools for monitoring is limited.
Therefore, in developing this work, the project team collaborate
with partners in the Statutory Nature Conservation Bodies and with
other
UKMMAS partners to understand what monitoring is currently
going on and to determine how it could be further developed to
cover this broad biological and geographical scope. There are
several streams of work and we ultimately aim to:
- streamline protocols and procedures for UK monitoring
- consider monitoring survey designs and work with MPA monitoring
to design effective operational monitoring surveys which combine
monitoring needs for habitats both within and outside MPAs
- work with UKMMAS partners on developing indicators and the
practical side of implementing assessment tools
- deliver options for the cost effective monitoring of benthic
habitats and protected sites to UK Governments
Our long term goal is to build a fully integrated and cost
effective monitoring programme for benthic marine habitats with
robust QA systems and good standard protocols. This programme will
help to answer the many important questions posed by the various
national and international policy obligations and will robustly
inform management of human activities in the marine
environment.