Innovative approaches for marine biodiversity monitoring and assessment of conservation status of nature values in the Baltic Sea

MARMONI aims at developing concepts for assessment of conservation status of marine biodiversity, including species and habitats and impacts of various human activities.

The project developed innovative monitoring and assessment approach based on joint set of marine biodiversity indicators and tested in practice the monitoring and assessment techniques. The project was acting in the Baltic Sea in territorial waters and EEZ of Estonia, Latvia, Finland and Sweden and  aimed at applying a regional approach for future marine biodiversity monitoring and cross country co-operation when assessing marine biodiversity in the Baltic Sea.

MARMONI has achieved results on the following issues:

• Developing a set of  marine biodiversity indicators;
• Testing the indicators and survey methods in the field (four demonstration areas, see above) and proposing a few  for wider application e.g. at Baltic Sea level;
• Assessing cost & time effectiveness of these methods and trying to judge on costs of indicators for biodiversity monitoring versus completeness of gathered information;
• Applying the indicators for biodiversity assessment according to Good Environmental Status (GES) of the MSFD as well as Favourable Conservations Status (FCS) of Species and Habitats according to the Habitats Directive;
• Demonstrating marine spatial management in Sweden to apply the indicators and survey methods at spatial dimension and make it applicable at planning processes;
• Accompanying and impacting implementation of the MSFD in the four target countries and contributing to indicator based marine biodiversity assessment and monitoring at Baltic Sea scale;
• Providing recommendations and forwarding lessons learned on indicator development, assessment of marine biodiversity and future marine monitoring programmes to competent authorities and policy makers;
• Informing stakeholders on marine biodiversity and its regulating policy frame as well as involving them into monitoring and supervision;
• Promoting MARMONI results at international conferences and seminars;
• Providing scientific backstopping for future monitoring methods and indicators by preparation and submission of a series of articles to scientific journals and preparing comprehensive publications under MARMONI logo.

Project partners

• Baltic Environmental Forum – Latvia – Lead partner (LV)
• Latvian Institute of Aquatic Ecology (LV)
• Institute for Environmental Solutions (LV)
• Latvian Fund for Nature (LV)
• Nature Conservation Agency (LV)
• Baltic Environmental Forum - Estonia (EE)
• Estonian Marine Institute (EE)
• Finnish Environment Institute (FI)
• Natural Resources Institute Finland (FI)
• The Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Managememt (SE)

Sub-contractors

• AquaBiota Water Research (SE)
• Lund University, Department of Biology (SE)
• The Swedish County Administrative Board of Blekinge (SE)
• The Swedish County Administrative Board of Skåne (SE)
• Latvian Ornithological Society (LV)
• Estonian University of Life Sciences (EE)