OSPAR's eutrophication group

1 February 2019

OSPAR’s experts in eutrophication travelled to beautiful Lisbon for the meeting of ICG-Eut. Portugal kindly hosted us in the Instituto Português do Mar e da Atmosfera.

The meeting was very busy but productive, too. In particular, the participants worked long days to make a comprehensive review of progress in delivering the eutrophication objectives of OSPAR’s North-East Atlantic Environment Strategy 2010-2020. The review helped inform the experts to look to the future and to draft new objectives for addressing eutrophication for OSPAR’s Strategy 2020-2030.

JMP-EUNOSAT project partners participated in ICG-Eut. The eutrophication experts welcomed the project’s excellent work to propose satellite-based approaches to monitoring eutrophication, to define ecologically-relevant assessment areas, and to propose regionally-harmonised assessment values.

ICES also participated in the meeting and presented work to develop COMPEAT; the Common Procedure Eutrophication Assessment Tool. Contracting Parties’ vision is to have a common semi-automated tool for assessing eutrophication, which will make the assessments more regionally harmonised and transparent. The experts were enthusiastic about the developing COMPEAT and drafted plans for next steps to develop it, including incorporating some of the key outcomes from the EUNOSAT project. These plans will be proposed to the Hazardous Substances and Eutrophication Committee, as a step towards the next eutrophication assessment for OSPAR Quality Status Report 2023.