PlanWise4Blue Portal

The knowledge and baseline dataset created with the support of the project will be integrated into the PlanWise4Blue web portal (http://www.sea.ee/planwise4blue), which will allow the analytical tool to be shared freely with all stakeholders. The portal will also include dedicated training material, developed with the support of the project, to enable all interested parties to carry out data-driven analyses related to alien species, with the aim of reducing the impact of alien species on the marine environment and increasing awareness of the impacts of alien species. With this tool we hope to improve the quality of environmental decisions made by the Ministry of Environment, the Environment Agency, the Environment Agency and local authorities, as the analyses carried out with the tool and the decisions taken on the basis of these analyses will help to mitigate the impacts of alien species in the marine environment.

Our approach involves (1) a meta-analysis of published scientific literature and/or monitoring databases showing the separate and/or synergistic effects of alien species on different ecosystem elements, and (2) the integration of such standardised impact magnitude estimates and distribution maps of different ecosystem components into a cumulative impact assessment framework (for a more detailed description of the methodology see Kotta, J. ; Fetissov, M.; Szava-Kovats, R.; Aps, R.; Martin, G. 2020. Online tool to integrate evidence-based knowledge into cumulative effects assessments. Environmental Advances, 2, 100026). Some of the pressures studied may be manageable (e.g. eutrophication) and others unmanageable (e.g. invasive species). The online tool allows the assessment of the impact of non-managed pressures in the context of managed pressures, and to show whether changes in the intensity of some managed pressures are expected to reduce the cumulative impact of alien species. Such a methodological approach will allow the prediction of the individual and combined effects of different human activities and introduced alien species, both current and future. This activity will result in a methodology and a web tool that will be practically applicable for MSFD D2C2 reporting. The methodology developed can be applied elsewhere in the Baltic Sea and in other marine ecosystems.

In 2023, work will continue on the development of the alien species baseline dataset and the integration of data into the portal.