ECOPOTENTIAL: Improving Future Ecosystem Benefits through Earth Observations

2.3.2 Pressures and Ecosystem Services What are the pressures facing the Protected Areas? Perceived pressures on coastal and marine ecosystem Protected Areas are shown in Figure 4. Protected Area managers considered fishing to be the highest pressure to their coastal and marine areas. Five out of seven respondents indicated the fishing pressure as high and one placed it as medium and one as low. Transport ranked second as pressure, while the individual scoring is more varied than for fishing (three noted it as high, two as medium, and two as low). Eutrophication, tourism and pollution are on average considered as a medium level pressure. If the Pelagos response of “no eutrophication pressure” is ignored, eutrophication ranks as the second highest pressure with three out of six high and three out of six medium. With the exception of fishing, for which the appraisal of the level of pressure is almost unanimously high, all other pressures show a considerable variation in appraisal between the areas. Sonar and sound pollution,

for example, is considered a high pressure in the Pelagos, while considered as no pressure in the other five Protected Areas. What are the important ecosystem services? The importance of various ecosystem services in coastal and marine ecosystem Protected Areas is shown in Figure 4. The highest ranked ecosystemservice in the coastal and marine areas is recreation and tourism, closely followed by fisheries and aesthetic qualities. The next two highest scoring ecosystem services are also cultural services (education and research), meaning that four out of the top five ecosystem services are cultural, and one out of the top 5 is a provisioning service. Surprisingly, cultural heritage does not score high while the conservation and protection of cultural heritage is defined as a goal in four out of seven Protected Areas (see §3.3.1). Except for agriculture (meat), none of the other provisioning services scores higher than 2.0. Fresh water and agriculture are the next highest provisioning services

P r e s s u r e s o n c oa s t a l a n d ma r i n e p r o t e c t e d a r e a s Pe r c e p t i o n s o f r e s p o n d e n t s

Pressures Protected Areas

Curonian Spit National Park

Nemuno Delta Regional Park

Pelagos Sanctuary Camargue

Wadden Sea

Danube Delta

Doñana National Park

Pressure Level high medium low none

fishing

transport

eutrophication

tourism

pollution

climate change

invasive species

resource extraction

agriculture

hunting

landscape fragmentation

forestry

Figure 4 : Perceived Pressures on Protected Area Coastal and Marine Ecosystems

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