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Strengthening Europe's Capability in Biological Ocean Observations

Future Science Brief calls to enhance European biological ocean observation capacity to strengthen global efforts towards our understanding of the ocean.

Europe lacks a multi-purpose integrated biological ocean observing system. The Future Science Brief recommends building an integrated biological ocean observation system, while supporting current capacity.

Enhancing and supporting the European biological ocean observing capacity will:

  1. bring benefits to society by underpinning sustainable management of human activity in the marine environment (CFP, WFD); 
  2. strengthen the implementation of the marine biodiversity conservation (CBD) and good environmental status assessment (MSFD);
  3. meet user needs and requirements for MSP by promoting the development of an integrated system; and
  4. assess progress against national and international conservation targets (e.g. Aichi Targets from the Convention on Biological Diversity), the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and the Blue Growth agenda.

Europe needs a strategic vision on biological ocean observations to increase the relevant biological ocean observation capacity, and bring together key stakeholders, to provide the long-term support for an integrated ocean observing system that contributes to the European Ocean Observing System (EOOS) and harmonized with the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS).

The Future Science Brief can be downloaded here and a short factsheet for policy makers can be found here. The news release for this publication can be found here.

More information on the working group that established this publication is available here.

EMB tracks the dissemination and impact of its documents for at least 2 years after publication. You can find a short summary of the dissemination and impact of this Future Science Brief here.