Description: This report reviews the current situation as regards to the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) Descriptor 1 (Biodiversity) for pelagic habitats and serves as a basis for a workshop with Member States experts and scientists that will be held on March 9-10 2021. Recommendations are in the concluding section. Pelagic habitats cover the 71% of Earth’s surface and play an essential role in regulating temperature on land, producing oxygen and food. They are also a management challenge where the alterations of their physical, chemical and biological characteristics negatively impact their ecosystem functioning and services (e.g. provisioning services). To address these challenges, the MSFD has required the assessment of pelagic habitats against environmental targets to reach Good Environmental Status (GES). A key step in the pelagic habitat assessment is a thorough understanding of its physical, chemical and biological processes and the drivers that underlie the spatiotemporal variability in its ecologically relevant ecosystem components. However, pelagic assessments to date have not sufficiently addressed the functional and structural characteristics of pelagic habitats processes, which is limiting our ability to inform on their environmental status and to disentangle the anthropogenic drivers. This report evaluates previously published work on pelagic habitats assessments considering the actions and targets to meet the MSFD requirements. To do this, the report (i) summarises the main drivers of variation in pelagic habitat characterization; (ii) reviews the common empirical approaches used to assess pelagic habitats, the advantages, and challenges; and finally (iii) exposes a set of recommendations for characterising pelagic habitats in EU waters. Since the pelagic habitats are made of a highly dynamic fluid, appropriate spatiotemporal scales regarding data and methods must be considered to assess their GES. This applies in particular to the selected indicators to propose the effective and quantifiable GES targets that need to be reached.

Description: Forward looking analyses are needed in order to anticipate which policy/management options can deliver the very ambitious objectives of the Zero Pollution (ZP) action plan. Integrated and sophisticated numerical modelling tools are useful to generate future scenarios and ‘what if’ analysis as they allow the virtual manipulation of the anthropogenic pressures on ecological systems. JRC has been developing an integrated modelling framework covering the inland and marine waters of the EU, the Marine Modelling Framework (MMF) that follows the principle of the Digital Twins (DT) and that allow to test the impacts of diverse management strategies on the status of freshwater and marine ecosystems through the EU. In the present report, the JRC-DT for water and marine ecosystems is used to test how different policy options can help achieve some of the ZP objectives. From the six top ambitions of the ZP action plan, two are particularly relevant for the water/marine environments. First, the ZP action plan states that it aims at ‘improving water quality by reducing waste’ and in particular, it mentions the (reduction of) ‘plastic litter at sea (by 50%)’. The second relevant ambition refers to ‘improving soil quality by reducing nutrient losses and chemical pesticides’ use by 50%’, which does not only impact soil quality but also the receiving waters (rivers, lakes and seas).

Description: The purpose of this report is to examine the current situation, risks and responses to the recreational use of nitrous oxide in Europe. To support this, the report also provides a state-of-the-art review of the chemistry, pharmacology and toxicology of the gas. It is intended for policymakers and practitioners.

Description: This study reviews the status of Marine Biodiversity Monitoring in the European Commission tendered the study “Marine Biodiversity Modelling” [RTD/2021/MV/10] to pursue the identification and characterization of a subset of candidate biodiversity models that could contribute to the implementation of the European Digital Twin of the Ocean (EU DTO). The EU DTO will be an operational infrastructure for digital ocean services that aims to support decision-making capabilities by authorities to implement EU policies like the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) but also by citizens and businesses operating at sea. Specific objectives of the project were: 1. Conduct a horizon scan to identify and map available modelling approaches used to hindcast, nowcast; 2. Develop a comprehensive catalogue to classify available modelling approaches according to their characteristics; 3. Propose a subset of the most meaningful models among major model typologies; 4. Assess whether these models can be used in the implementation of the Digital Twin Ocean and can improve the decision-making capacity under the MFSD.

Description: This is the fourth collection of reports of EFSA’s EU-FORA Fellowship Programme. EU-FORA started in 2016 as part of EFSA’s efforts to support the development of next generations of Europe’s food risk assessors. Five years later, it continues to empower food safety professionals, ensuring an interconnected community of experts, while stimulating the involvement of Member States in risk assessment work and building a common EU risk assessment culture.