Gaps in current Baltic Sea environmental monitoring – Science versus management perspectives
Kahlert, Maria; Eilola, Kari; Mack, Leoni; Meissner, Kristian; Sandin, Leonard; Strömberg, Helena; Uusitalo, Laura; Viktorsson, Lena; Liess, AntoniaAbstract
Legislations and commitments regulate Baltic Sea status assessments and monitoring. These assessments suffer from monitoring gaps that need prioritization. We used three sources of information; scientific articles, project reports and a stakeholder survey to identify gaps in relation to requirements set by the HELCOM's Baltic Sea Action Plan, the Marine Strategy Framework Directive and the Water Framework Directive. The most frequently mentioned gap was that key requirements are not sufficiently monitored in space and time. Biodiversity monitoring was the category containing most gaps. However, whereas more than half of the gaps in reports related to biodiversity, scientific articles pointed out many gaps in the monitoring of pollution and water quality. An important finding was that the three sources differed notably with respect to which gaps were mentioned most often. Thus, conclusions about gap prioritization for management should be drawn after carefully considering the different viewpoints of scientists and stakeholders.
Keywords
Biology; Marine management; Literature review; Holistic gap analysis; Stakeholder surveyPublished in
Marine Pollution Bulletin2020, volume: 160, article number: 111669
Authors' information
Sustainable Development Goals
SDG14 Life below water
UKÄ Subject classification
Ecology
Publication Identifiers
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2020.111669
URI (permanent link to this page)
https://res.slu.se/id/publ/108559