Handbooks for monitoring species and habitats of Community interest (EU Directives 92/43/EEC and 09/147/CE) in Italy: marine environment

The EU Birds and Habitat Directives require Member States to implement surveillance of the conservation status of habitats and species of Community Interest. This handbook is aimed at providing a standardised methodological guidance for the implementation of national monitoring programs of the Italian marine species and habitat types. According to the European guidelines, the assessments of species and habitat must be carried out at biogeographical scale, by compiling information on specific parameters. For each species and habitat listed in the Habitat Directive’s annexes, the conservation status needs to be assessed at scale of biogeographical region (the Mediterranean Marine Region), combining data on some parameters. "Range" (based on actual distribution), "Population", “Habitat for the species” and "Future Prospects" are the parameters for the species, whereas “Area”, “Range”, “Structure and Functions” and “Future Prospects” are those for the habitats. Overall, the handbook contains 48 monitoring forms, 40 referring to species (2 algae, 6 invertebrates, 5 reptiles, 14 mammals and 13 birds) and 8 to habitats (7 Coastal and Halophytic Habitats and 1 Rocky Habitats and Caves).

The monitoring forms have been defined with the collaboration of the Italian Society of Marine Biology (SIBM) and reviewed by the Italian Regions. The monitoring forms thus illustrate the most effective known techniques and provide an operational guidance for data collection and monitoring plan with the aim of standardizing data collection efforts in all Italian seas. Indeed, standardization is required to produce consistent datasets, useful to assess the conservation status of the marine species and habitats listed in the annexes of the two European Directives.

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