BSEP116B Biodiversity in the Baltic Sea - Helcom

for a given site or area. The second is to define a
desirable state for the selected indicators. In the
approach used here, this includes both a quantitative
reference (’pristine’ or Reference Condition/
RefCon) status, as well as an acceptable deviation
(AcDev) from this reference. If a reference status
cannot be defined, a tentative target value can be
specified and later revised according to the adaptive
management approach. Using the information
from these two steps, the status of the single
indicator from the site can be defined.
The third and final challenge, from the status
assessment perspective, is to assess the overall
status of the biodiversity. This can be accomplished
by using the indicators, and their reference
levels and acceptable deviations, as components
in an overall assessment matrix. Such a
matrix can be constructed in a number of ways,
including weighting and grouping of the different
indicators. In this assessment, a matrix tool
termed BEAT (the HELCOM Biodiversity Assessment
Tool) was used to assess the overall status
of biodiversity divided into the three categories
of ‘Landscapes’, ’Communities’, and ’Species’,
according to the biodiversity segment of the
HELCOM Baltic Sea Action Plan (BSAP).
84
Figure 5.1. Approximate location of national case studies. Colours of the pointers refer to assessment
results (see Table 5.3). The Baltic Proper sub-basin was assessed as a whole as indicated with red colour on
the map (see Table 5.4).