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This report presents an ecosystem assessment covering the total land area of the EU as well as the EU marine regions. The assessment is carried out by Joint Research Centre, European Environment Agency, DG Environment, and the European Topic Centres on Biological Diversity and on Urban, Land and Soil Systems. This report constitutes a knowledge base which can support the evaluation of the 2020 biodiversity targets. It also provides a data foundation for future assessments and policy developments, in particular with respect to the ecosystem restoration agenda for the next decade (2020-2030). The report presents an analysis of the pressures and condition of terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems using a single, comparable methodology based on European data on trends of pressures and condition relative to the policy baseline 2010. The following main conclusions are drawn: - Pressures on ecosystems exhibit different trends. - Land take, atmospheric emissions of air pollutants and critical loads of nitrogen are decreasing but the absolute values of all these pressures remain too high. - Impacts from climate change on ecosystems are increasing. - Invasive alien species of union concern are observed in all ecosystems, but their impact is particularly high in urban ecosystems and grasslands. - Pressures from overfishing activities and marine pollution are still high. - In the long term, air and freshwater quality is improving. - In forests and agroecosystems, which represent over 80% of the EU territory, there are improvements in structural condition indicators (biomass, deadwood, area under organic farming) relative to the baseline year 2010 but some key bio-indicators such as tree-crown defoliation continue to increase. This indicates that ecosystem condition is not improving. - Species-related indicators show no progress or further declines, particularly in agroecosystems. The analysis of trends in ecosystem services concluded that the current potential of ecosystems to deliver timber, protection against floods, crop pollination, and nature-based recreation is equal to or lower than the baseline value for 2010. At the same time, the demand for these services has significantly increased. A lowered potential in combination with a higher demand risks to further decrease the condition of ecosystems and their contribution to human well-being. Despite the wide coverage of environmental legislation in the EU, there are still large gaps in the legal protection of ecosystems. On land, 76% of the area of terrestrial ecosystems, mainly forests, agroecosystems and urban ecosystems, are excluded from a legal designation under the Bird and Habitat Directives. Freshwater and marine ecosystems are subject to specific protection measures under the Water Framework and Marine Strategy Framework Directives. The condition of ecosystems that are under legal designation is unfavourable. More efforts are needed to bend the curve of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation and to put ecosystems on a path to recovery. The progress that is made in certain areas such as pollution reduction, increasing air and water quality, increasing share of organic farming, the expansion of forests, and the efforts to maintain marine fish stocks at sustainable levels show that a persistent implementation of policies can be effective. These successes should encourage us to act now and to put forward an ambitious plan for the restoration of Europe’s ecosystems., JRC.D.3-Land Resources

Land degradation is recognised as a threat to the European and global ecosystems and their condition, with direct relevance to climate change adaptation, human well-being, food-securityand social welfare. However, objectives to halt and revert land degradation are dispersed over a range of strategic documents and policy guidelines at the EU. So are the topics of land and soil, which can be found across policy instruments of various sectors.Therefore, there is a need for a single up-to-date strategic policy framework that preserves and enhances land resources in the European Union. This report aims at providing an overview of the current knowledge regarding land degradation from different perspectives: by describing the current policy context, in particular key policy programs at the European and international level with ambitions to remediate land degradation, by specifying current approaches towards land degradation mapping, with specific emphasis on mapping impacts on ecosystem services, by analysing the evolution of land degradation assessments over time, their knowledge gain and weaknesses, by showing the importance of soil degradation mapping as central factor for land degradation mapping, by depicting the potentials of remote sensing approaches for land degradation mapping, by explaining the concept of Land Degradation Neutrality, as developed by UNCCD, and by proposing the way forward through establishing an Integrated Land Systems Data Platform to support the mapping of land degradation impacts on ecosystem services.

Ongoing pressures on European land are manifold with extreme climate events and non-sustainable use of land resources being amongst the most important drivers altering the functioning of the ecosystems. The protection and conservation of European natural capital is one of the key objectives of the 7th Environmental Action Plan (EAP). The EAP stipulates that European land must be managed in a sustainable way by 2020 and the UN Sustainable development goals define a Land Degradation Neutral world as one of the targets. This implies that land degradation (LD) assessment of European ecosystems must be performed repeatedly allowing for the assessment of the current state of LD as well as changes compared to a baseline adopted by the UNCCD for the objective of land degradation neutrality. However, scientifically robust methods are still lacking for large-scale assessment of LD and repeated consistent mapping of the state of terrestrial ecosystems. Historical land degradation assessments based on various methods exist, but methods are generally non-replicable or difficult to apply at continental scale (Allan et al. 2007). The current lack of research methods applicable at large spatial scales is notably caused by the non-robust definition of LD, the scarcity of field data on LD, as well as the complex inter-play of the processes driving LD (Vogt et al., 2011). Moreover, the link between LD and changes in land use (how land use changes relates to change in vegetation productivity and ecosystem functioning) is not straightforward. In this study we used the segmented trend method developed by Horion et al. (2016) for large-scale systematic assessment of hotspots of change in ecosystem functioning in relation to LD. This method alleviates shortcomings of widely used linear trend model that does not account for abrupt change, nor adequately captures the actual changes in ecosystem functioning (de Jong et al. 2013; Horion et al. 2016). Here we present a new methodology for assessing gradual and abrupt changes in ecosystem functioning in Europe. Based on segmented trend analysis of water-use efficiency (WUE) time series, an Ecosystem Change Type (ECT) map was produced over Europe at 1km resolution for the period 1999 to 2013. An analysis of auxiliary data on land use/cover change, drought trends, and soil threats was performed over hotspot areas to better understand the observed changes in ecosystem functioning and their driving mechanisms. The ECT map was validated using the case study sites from the EU-funded RECARE project. Overall, the ECT map accurately highlighted areas characterized by a major change in pathways of ecosystem functioning as well as indicated the type and timing of changes. Allan, R. et al. (2007). Climate and land degradation. Verlag Berlin Heidelberg: Springer. de Jong, R et al. (2013). Remote Sensing, 5, 1117-1133 Horion, S. et al. (2016). Global Change Biology, 22, 2801-2817 Vogt, J. V et al. (2011). Land Degradation & Development, 22: 150-165.

Climate change has caused noticeable effects on human health in Europe, mainly as a result of extreme events, an increase in climate-sensitive diseases, and a deterioration in environmental and social conditions. Heat waves were thedeadliest extreme weather event in the period 1991–2015 in Europe.Increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather- and climate-related events may lead to more disastrous impacts on ecosystems and their services. Management of ecosystems can help to avoid or significantly reduce these impacts.The total reported economic losses caused by extreme weather- and climate-related events in the EEA member countries over the period 1980-2015 amount to around EUR 433 billion (in 2015 values). A large share of the total losses (70 %) has been caused by a small number of events (3 %).

The European Commission‘s Joint Research Centre of the (JRC), together with UNEP and supported by a global network of international research institutions and experts, are developing the new World Atlas of Desertification (WAD) Monitoring and assessing land degradation dynamics involves increasingly most relevant information extracted from time series of satellite observations globally. The dynamics of the earth’s standing vegetation biomass is considered a valid approximation of overall land system productive capacity dynamics and thus also reflecting the underlying ecologic conditions and possible constraints for primary productivity, such as soil fertility, water availability, land use/management etc., and hence related to land degradation. In fact, reduction or loss of land productive capacity, mostly biological and/or economical is one common denominator in the various definitions that are used for land degradation.The currently longest available satellite observation datasets with global coverage at 1km resolution, from e.g the SPOT VGT sensor, have a continuous frequent temporal sampling over a long enough period, 15 years now, that makes it possible to extract proxy information on the phenology and seasonal productivity for each 1km2 area on earth to compile a global land productivity dynamics layer. Even longer continuous time series with more than 30 years continuity are available through the GIMMS NDVI product dating back as far as to 1981, however with the limitation of the spatial resolution to 8x8 km pixels. This resolution may be well suitable for the analysis of broader land- atmosphere interaction but may imply stronger limitations for monitoring and assessing the human-ecosystem interactions primarily through land use at landscape level. These operate and function typically at smaller land units as can be typically depicted at the spatial resolution of GIMMS. Nevertheless, the length of this NDVI time series raises interest to consider also ways to combine it with higher resolution products for enhanced analysis.

Land degradation and desertification are complex phenomena that result in environmental damage, economic inefficiency and social inequity and are reflected by a reducing productive capacity of the land and soil. Research indicated that they are driven by a multiple but a limited number of causal aspects that unbalance the capacity of the environment system to sustainably produce ecosystem services and economic value. Competition for land, driven by societal needs or economic opportunities, adds further stress on the land resources. To address these complex global challenges, a monitoring and assessment system offering up-to-date information on the status and trends of land degradation and their causes and effects is needed to provide science-based routes for possible land use solutions. The assessment concept that has been outlined for the compilation of the new World Atlas of Desertification (WAD) confronts this complexity by converging evidence of stress on the land system caused by various issues. These issues relate to sets of dynamics of the human-environment system and include changing agricultural or pastoral land use and management practices, changing population and societal aspects, changing aridity and drought. The WAD describes the issues, spatially documents their change, whenever data is available, highlights the importance of the issues in relation to land degradation processes and illustrates the integrated assessment concepts. The first step is the preparation of solid global data layers that are related to, or express aspects that can be related to, land-system productivity dynamics and status. These can be used for identifying and evaluating the interaction of spatial variables with the land-system productivity dynamics. Initial analysis of the land productivity dynamics within stratified land cover/use areas, such as the global croplands, show substantial differences in the extension, geographic location and possible related causes of potentially critical areas. The stratified integration of global data layers does not produce the ‘mythical map of global land degradation’ but allows locating areas where stress on the land system is observed that can be related to manifest causal issues. Preventing judgement on the complex status of ‘land degradation’ the WAD opens the way to a positive approach to deal with the problem, providing also helpful evidence for stakeholders to design more conscious solutions for land use.

Expectations are that within the next few decades the food production needs to and will increase in response to demands from a still growing world population. This pressure, engendered through complex socio-economic processes, provokes more intense and sometimes non-adapted use of the resource base causing land degradation which affects the land productivity. Land productivity, whether related to natural, semi natural or agricultural produce, conditions carbon fluxes. Hence it is an important measure in the carbon discussion. Especially when considering effects of land use change and the capacity of soils to be sinks or sources of carbon, information on the dynamics of land productivity related to such land use changes can help to understand the human impact on carbon fluxes. We simplify by assuming that where land productivity increases the potential for net carbon fixation, by plants or in the soil, increases. We consider only agricultural land use change and use the Ramankutty dataset (Ramanakutty and Foley, 1999 and 2012). The potential effect of land degradation through agricultural land use change on the carbon flux is explored here through the relation of agriculture land use change with the observed land productivity dynamics. We calculate land productivity dynamics using time series of remote sensing data modeled into values that are indicative for the seasonal biomass production (Cherlet et al., 2013 ; Ivits et al., 2013). This qualitatively reflects the change in potential for carbon fixation by plants, the input for soil organic carbon and the physical protection that can reduce carbon emissions from soil. Levels of potential for soil organic carbon depletion are modeled empirically using land use and some soil characteristics against a base map of soil organic carbon as produced by Hiederer (Hiederer and Köchy, 2012). This preliminary study is carried out in the framework of the compilation of a new World Atlas of Desertification, an initiative that is coordinated by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission with support from a wide network of experts.

This report documents how land-productivity dynamics can be calculated from vegetation indices derived from long-term low-resolution satellite time series such as the GIMMS3g dataset combined with productivity efficiency measurements derived from short, recent, medium resolution data such as those from the SPOT VEGETATION sensor. The limited set of NDVI variables is extended by a number of phenological and productivity relevant variables. Keeping statistical solidity, qualitative approaches have been selected to classify, interpret and integrate these several variables. Intermediate products are produced that are then combined into a Land-productivity Dynamics data layer. Land-productivity dynamics can indicate levels of sustained land-quality and is therefore used as first step in the land degradation assessment., JRC.D.6-Knowledge for Sustainable Development and Food Security