Anthropogenic pressures on land and sea

Assessing pressures of human activities in coastal and marine areas of the Mediterranean and beyond

CURRENT STATUS

The coastal and marine environment is exposed to multiple factors and pressures stemming from human activities and climate change. Some of the pressures come from land-based activities like tourism, urbanization along the coast and pollution from agriculture fields while others are sea-based, as in the case of maritime transport, fishing and aquaculture, and oil and gas drilling. Understanding the combined impact of these activities on our natural ecosystems is crucial, particularly when they occur in biodiversity hotspot regions such as the Mediterranean.

Fortunately, the cumulative impact of these various pressures is being acknowledged more and more by national, regional and European policies; the Barcelona Convention and its protocols aim to tackle pollution and an integrated management of the coast, and the EU’s Marine Strategy Framework Directive is addressing the environmental status and trends of European waters.

To assess and monitor the effectiveness of these policies, data needs to be collected and made available so that adequate indicators based on scientific approaches can be developed.

Image
Image

OUR ACTIONS

We at ETC-UMA have built an analytical approach to measure the pressures on coastal and marine ecosystems around the DPSIR  framework. Our approach has helped describe interactions between human activities and the environment, together with related responses from policy. Going beyond the notion of sources of pollution, we widened the scope to cover a range of drivers and factors involving environmental changes and affecting marine and coastal ecosystems. Applied so far to the Mediterranean Sea, we obtained a full overview of the links between the pressures, the underlying causes and the potential final impacts and of the potential policy responses that could influence the situation in the region. For our analyses we used spatially explicit indicators combined with scientific data to provide a comprehensive composite pressure indicator.

Our achievements are

Development of an integrated methodology based on the Ecosystem approach to produce indicators on multiple drivers and pressures

Methodological improvements for the assessment of cumulative pressures.

Development of the MedBioLitter open database on science available on marine litter and the impacts on biodiversity in the Mediterranean.

Production of indicators related to coastal and maritime tourism.

Resources

Get in touch

Dania Abdul Malak

Policy approach

daniaabdulmalak@uma.es

Dania Abdul Malak is a senior environmental researcher and Director of the European Topic Centre at the University of Malaga (ETC-UMA). She has over 15 years’ experience in environmental assessment and management...

Read More

Christoph Schröder

Indicator approach

christoph.schroder@uma.es

Based on my MSc in Geography (University of Bonn) I have developed expertise in Geographic Information Systems and land use/cover change analysis from local to global scale with particular interest in the Mediterranean...

Read More
Image

Boosting Climate Resilience: Wetland4Change Project Advances Flood Management Solutions for Mediterranean Coastal Zones

The Mediterranean coastal zone´s combination of multiple severe climate hazards – rising temperatures, water scarcity, sea-level rise, and extreme weather events – makes it a hotspot for highly interconnected climate risks for the ecosystems and societies.  Recent catastrophic floods in ...
Image

RESTORE4Cs 1st Policy Brief: How can coastal wetlands help achieve EU climate goals?

The first RESTORE4Cs Policy Brief of RESTORE4Cs, “How can coastal wetlands help achieve EU climate goals?“, highlights the importance of European coastal wetlands for reducing Greenhouse Gas emissions. The key messages of the first RESTORE4Cs Policy Brief include: Coastal wetlands are important natural carbon stores, ...
Image

Mapping the Impact of Blue Tourism in the Mediterranean

The IUCN Centre for Mediterranean Cooperation with the support of ETC-UMA in the framework of the Blue Tourism Initiative, has released a comprehensive report entitled “Mapping the Impact of Blue Tourism in the Mediterranean: Vulnerability Assessment of Coastal and Marine ...
Image

StrategyMedFor Presented at Annual Medforval Meeting 2024

StrategyMedFor was prominently featured at the Annual Medforval Meeting 2024, held from June 5-7 in Fontecchio, Italy. The event brought together 25 practitioners  from national parks and natural reserves across 9 Mediterranean countries, providing a valuable platform for StrategyMedFor to ...
Image

Celebrating leadership in environmental management: an interview with Dania Abdul Malak

From designing integrated ecosystem assessments in Europe and the Mediterranean to transforming outcomes into evidence-based recommendations for regional stakeholders, the European Topic Centre on Spatial Analysis and Synthesis (ETC-UMA) stands as a flagship for territorial cooperation. At the forefront of ...
Image

Save the date! Unlocking solutions for coastal conservation in Europe

How can coastal wetlands respond to major European Union objectives such as climate neutrality, biodiversity protection, and pollution reduction? What key role do coastal wetlands play in achieving EU commitments for climate mitigation and biodiversity conservation? The European Topic Centre ...
Image

Towards a Strategy for the Sustainable Management of Mediterranean Forests (StrategyMedFor)

The StrategyMedFor project, co-financed by the Interreg Euro-MED programme, was launched at the University of Malaga during a two day meeting that took place on March 18 and 19, 2024. The European Topic Centre on Spatial Analysis and Synthesis (ETC-UMA), ...
Image

Collaborative science for forests by ETC-UMA showcased in Slovenia during the COP23

As UNEP MAP partner organization, ETC-UMA recently engaged in the organization of a session with Mediterranean institutions under the topic of climate change, entitled: From COASTAL to FOREST ecosystems: Mediterranean Nature-based Solutions to tackle climate change and ensure the Resilience ...
Image

Tools for conserving the Spanish coast

On the initiative of the Instituto Universitario Hábitat Territorio y Digitalización (iHTD) of the University of Malaga, around 70 representatives of Spanish public administrations, researchers, architecture and environmental science players and civil society signed up to the second debate on ...
Image

GreenEye System: a cloud-based system to monitor wetlands in Andalusia

Developed in the frame of the LifeWatch INDALO project cofinanced by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) for the study of biodiversity and global change in Andalucia, GreenEye System, this new cloud-based monitoring system, provides useful tools for wetlands’ assessment, ...
Image

Looking back and forth to Mediterranean Forests

Timely published to enrich the knowledge available to fight fires and climate change challenges after an extremely hot summer, the proceedings of the Seventh Mediterranean Forest Week “Forest and Ecosystem Restoration for the next Mediterranean Generations” held from 21 to ...
Image

More space for innovative Mediterranean forest data partnerships

The report entitled A knowledge baseline on Mediterranean forests supported by innovation launched in July by ETC-UMA provides a highlight of what Mediterranean countries and institutions are doing to integrate new digital, satellite and Artificial Intelligence technologies into forest monitoring ...
Image

The Earth from Space shown by ETC-UMA at FANTEC 2023

Students from 80 centers from all over Andalusia came together on Friday 19 May 2023 at the High School of Industrial Engineering of the University of Malaga to participate, one more year, in the Andalusian Technology Fair 2023. Antonio Sanchez ...
Image

ETC-UMA launches new technologies applied to ecosystem knowledge

Built on the Google Earth Engine cloud computing platform, the new wetland monitoring system based on remote sensing data, developed by ETC-UMA and presented in April 2023 at the National Centre for Environmental Education (CENEAM by its acronym in Spanish) ...
Image

Celebrating and calibrating Mediterranean forests

The Mediterranean basin is the third-richest hotspot in the world in terms of plant biodiversity  and one of the greatest sources of endemic plants on Earth. Its plant diversity accounts for 25 000 plant species, 60 percent of which are ...