Abstract

Assessing the Conservation Status of Habitats and Species in EU.
Track: Environmental Management
Authors: Brian Mac Sharry, IURIE MAXIM

In 2007 the first systematic assessment of the conservation status of the 216 habitat and 1,182 species protected under the EU Habitats Directives was undertaken as part of a regular 6 yearly reporting cycle. This reporting covered 25 countries. The scale of this project was unparalleled, being undertaken by the European Topic Centre on Biological Diversity of the European Environmental Agency.

There were over 12,000 spatial data sets submitted in a variety of feature types and in 31 different projections. It was necessary to design and implement a series of QA/QC procedures in order to harmonise the data. The entire processing of data was done with ESRI technology, especially through the use of Model builder. The results from GIS were crucial in weighting the national assessments in order to produce EU level assessments. Only 17% of species and habitats were assessed as being in a favourable conservation status.