ME5312 Lifeform Final Report

Development of a UK Integrated Plankton Monitoring Programme A final report of the Lifeform and State Space project Prepared for The Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Nobel House, 17 Smith Square. London SW1 P 3JR May 2015 Prepared by C. Scherer and R.J. Gowen Fisheries and Aquatic Ecosystems Branch, Agri-food and Biosciences Institute, Newforge Lane, Belfast, BT9 5PX. P. Tett Scottish Association for Marine Science, Scottish Marine Institute, Oban, PA37 1QA. A. Atkinson Plymouth Marine Laboratory, Prospect Place, The Hoe Plymouth PL1 3DH M. Baptie Scottish Environment Protection, Agency Angus Smith Building, 6 Parklands Avenue, Eurocentral, Holytown, North Lanarkshire, ML1 4WQ M. Best Environment Agency, Kingfisher House Orton Goldhay, Peterborough, PE2 5ZR E. Bresnan and K. Cook Marine Scotland, Marine Laboratory, P.O. Box 101, 375 Victoria Road, Aberdeen, AB11 9DB. R. Forster Cefas, Pakefield Rd Lowestoft, Suffolk NR330HT S. Keeble Blue Lobster IT Ltd, Sheffield Technology Parks, Cooper Buildings, Arundel Street, Sheffield, S1 2NS. A. McQuatters-Gollop Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science, The Laboratory, Citadel Hill, Plymouth, PL1 2PB. i Summary The lifeform and state space project (Defra ME5312) was part of work undertaken to support the implementation by the UK of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD). It was carried out by a consortium of nine institutional partners, led by the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI), between August 2013 and March 2015. The MSFD requires the establishment of a series of environmental targets and associated indicators, and the establishment and implementation of a monitoring programme for ongoing assessment of the marine regions for which member states are responsible. In the case of the UK, the relevant sub-regions are the Greater North Sea and the Celtic Seas, within the North-east Atlantic Region. During earlier workshops, the UK had identified, in principle, indicators, criteria and targets for the 'pelagic habitat' in these sub-regions. For MSFD purposes, 'pelagic habitat' means the plankton - the small drifting animals and the tiny micro-algae of the water column. These form the basis of the marine food web and in this way provide the habitat for fish and higher marine vertebrates. The MSFD lists 11 'Qualitative Descriptors' (QDs) that provide broad-brush environmental targets. Of these, QD 1 (Biodiversity), 4 (Marine Food Webs), 5 (Eutrophication) and 6 (Sea- Floor Integrity) are sensitive to the state of the plankton. The earlier workshops had recommended the use of a lifeform and state space approach for tracking changes in the state of the plankton in UK waters and suggested that data integration and reporting could be achieved through the web- based EMECO data tool. The main objectives of the present project were to operationalise this approach, and to provide costed options for a UK plankton monitoring programme mainly but not exclusively for the biodiversity element of the MSFD. ii Operationalisation required work on three main components: (1) Arranging for the results of plankton monitoring - typically as lists of species and their abundances from regular samples - to be uploaded to the EMECO data tool website and the species data aggregated into a small set of 'lifeforms' (Table 3.2) defined by the consortium in relation to MSFD QDs; (2) Plotting the aggregated data into a set of state spaces - where in each case the axes were the abundances of a pair of lifeforms - and using these plots to generate time-series of annual values of a 'Plankton Index' or PI (Figures 2.3d and 2.4); (3) relating the time-series of PI to time-series of pressures and to the agreed target that there should be no significant trend in a PI series that was correlated with a pressure time-series. The design of the monitoring programme took into account recent advances in understanding the physical dynamics of UK waters and aimed to take observations from the main ecohydrodynamic regimes within each of the regions used in 'Charting Progress 2'. A map of regimes in UK waters, based on a 50-year model hind cast by Cefas, showed mixed, indeterminate, `regions of freshwater influence', seasonally-stratified and near-permanently-stratified waters. The map was over- plotted with existing fixed-site monitoring stations and existing routes of the Continuous Plankton recorder (CPR) (Figure 3.2). A gap analysis was performed to identify the options for taking data from these sites and routes into EMECO and for upgrading sampling to meet requirements of the MSFD monitoring scheme proposed in this report. The minimum recommended biodiversity monitoring programme consists of regular sampling of the phytoplankton and zooplankton at each fixed point sampling station (total 13) and CPR route (total 10) in the main ecohydrodynamic regimes of each CP2 region (Table 5.1). This programme is the minimum needed to deliver an integrated assessment of changes in the condition of plankton community. Other options are given. iii The integrated system for uploading plankton data and establishing and reporting outputs is now operational in EMECO. Graphical outputs (graphs, plots, and maps) of reference conditions and comparisons are available and time-series plots to track changes can be illustrated (www.emecodata.net). The reporting tool is also in place. It was agreed that the reference period for the PI would be 2008-10 for all sites and routes. The lifeform and state space method will begin to provide objective assessment of 'plankton habitat' state, in relation to pressures, as years of new data become available to extend the PI time-series. Meanwhile, assessments of the current state of the plankton at the monitoring sites are in hand using expert judgement and a template devised by AFBI. All of the five sites assessed so far were determined as being representative in 2008-10 of GES and so for the plankton habitat, this allows the reference conditions to be interpreted as GES. It is hoped that papers can be published in peer-reviewed scientific journals to substantiate these semi-subjective assessments. iv Contents Summary ................................................................................................................................. ii 1. General introduction .......................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Background .................................................................................................................... 1 1.2 The Marine Strategy Framework Directive ............................................................... 2 1.3 UK approach .................................................................................................................. 3 2. The scientific basis for the monitoring programme ....................................................... 6 2.1 Ecosystem Health and Good Environmental Status ................................................ 7 2.2 Lifeforms ...................................................................................................................... 10 2.3 A regional approach based on ecohydrodynamic conditions .............................. 13 2.4 Detecting change in the plankton ............................................................................. 18 2.4.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................ 18 2.4.2 The state space approach ......................................................................................... 19 2.4.3 The Plankton Index ................................................................................................. 23 3. Key elements of the UK integrated plankton monitoring programme ..................... 27 3.1 Targets, baseline conditions and indicators ............................................................ 27 3.1.1 Establishing a target for the plankton indicator ..................................................... 27 3.1.2 Reference conditions ............................................................................................... 30 3.1.3 Indicators ................................................................................................................ 32 3.2 Sampling strategy ....................................................................................................... 37 3.3 Quality Assurance ....................................................................................................... 43 3.4 Reporting ...................................................................................................................... 43 3.4.1 EMECO – General background .............................................................................. 43 3.4.2 Data processing ....................................................................................................... 44 v 3.4.3 Outputs ................................................................................................................... 47 3.4.4 Reporting with the EMECO reporting tool............................................................ 49 3.4.5 EMECO Reporting Tool ......................................................................................... 52 4. Operational readiness ....................................................................................................... 52 4.1 State of readiness ........................................................................................................

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