Overall, Europe’s regional seas are slowly recovering from eutrophication, mainly due to efforts to reduce nutrient inputs over the past decades.
The shared vision for Europe’s seas is a healthy marine environment where human-induced eutrophication is minimised. However, the European Environment Agency’s (EEA) assessment, published today, shows that eutrophication still remains a large scale problem in some of Europe’s regionals seas. The assessment shows some positive effects from better nutrient management but the overall target of healthy seas will not be met everywhere by 2020.
The EEA assessment ‘Nutrient enrichment and eutrophication in Europe’s seas’ explores whether Europe has been able to reverse eutrophication trends in its regional seas. The assessment is based on publicly available monitoring data, primarily collected in the context of the Water Framework Directive, the Marine Strategy Framework Directive and Regional Sea Conventions.
The EEA report shows that 2400000 km2 of Europe’s seas have been mapped for eutrophication. However, the coverage of the assessed area varies significantly among regional seas with 99 % coverage in the Baltic Sea, 27 % in the North-East Atlantic, 9 % in the Black sea, and only 4 % in the Mediterranean Sea.
Continue reading at European Environment Agency
Image via European Environment Agency
