Results from retrospective Baltic Sea biodiversity indicator status assessment using BEAT 3.0 tool

Here we present all our results from retrospective Baltic Sea biodiversity indicator data analysis using BEAT 3.0. The BEAT tool (Nygård et al. 2018) is an R coded software (Murray & Nygård 2018, available online: https://zenodo.org/record/1288315#.XRxNp2cXYg4) developed for analyzing marine biodivesity status. It follows the strucuture of EU's Marine Strategy Framework Directive. For more detailed metadata about the tool, see Nygård et al. 2018.

We used data from various biodiversity indicators in two areas of the Baltic Sea: Bothnian Sea and Gulf of Finland. BEAT integrates indicators to ecosystem components and aggregates them spatially (more details can be found in Nygård et al. 2018). We produced retrospective time series of integrated and aggregated indicators. The yearly assessments are done using the moving average of the indicator status of the past 5 years in order to gain a more robust assessment result. The assessment follows the protocol of biodiversity assessment in the HELCOM Holistic assessment http://www.helcom.fi/baltic-sea-trends/holistic-assessments

In the results table, all different spatial levels as well as ecosystem components are shown. All indicator results have a value between 0 and 1. If the indicator has a value over 0.6, it is considered to be in a good environmental status. Below are short description of the different columns:

• SAUID: ID of the spatial assessment unit (SAU) used. The largest SAU is Baltic Sea with an ID 1. It is divided to smaller SAUs and all individual SAUs have their own ID.
• SAUlevel: The highest possible level of SAU is the Baltic Sea and it is the level 1. The sea basins (for example Bothnian Sea) are the level 2 and so on.
• ECID: Ecosystem component ID. All possible indicators have their own ID. See the list of ecosystem components in the input files of the tool (Murray & Nygård 2018).
• EClevel: Ecosystem component level. The level 1 is biodiversity, in the level 2 it is divided to pelagic habitat, birds, fish, benthic habitat and mammals and so on.
• EcosystemComponent: this column tells the ecosystem component. It can be higher level e.g. biodversity or an individual indicator for certain taxa.
• EQR: ecological quality ratio. The status of the certain ecosystem component in a certain SAU. The value varies between 0 and 1. If it is over 0.6, the ecosystem component is considered to be in a good status.
• Columns H-T: These refer to certain descriptors of Marine Strategy Framework Directive. If the ecosystem component is considered to have a link to a certain descriptor, an EQR value is given.
• year: year of the assessment. Note: all the yearly values are a moving average of past 5 years.