The NEAT Tool | HCMR – Institute of Oceanography

NEAT (Nested Environmental Status Assessment) is an integrative methodological tool, which has been developed in the framework of the FP7 EU Project DEVOTES, coordinated by Dr. Angel Borja, AZTI – Tecnalia, Pasaia (Spain), and is being used to assess different ecosystem components and geographical areas.

The tool uses a combination of high-level integration of habitats and spatial units and an averaging approach, allowing for specification on structural and spatial levels, applicable to any geographical scale. The analysis provides an overall assessment for each case study area and a separate assessment for each of the ecosystem components included in the assessment.

In the frame of the European Project ENV.C2-MEDCIS (http://medcis.eu), coordinated by the IO, the NEAT was applied to assess the environmental status of the marine ecosystems, under the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD). To this direction, the IO applied the NEAT to Saronikos Gulf, by testing different spatial assessment units, ecological components and indices in the software. The application of NEAT in Saronikos Gulf showed that NEAT tools can be applied for the assessment of the environmental status of the Hellenic coastal marine environments (Pavlidou et al., 2019).

The NEAT Tool 2 — NEAT assessment results, for the whole Saronikos Gulf and each of the Spatial Assessment Units (SAUs). The assessment includes all the ecosystem components, habitats and indicators for descriptors within the Marine Strategy Framework Directive. Colors indicate the status: High: blue; Good: green; Moderate: yellow; Poor: orange and Bad: red. Source: Pavlidou et al., 2019

The NEAT Tool 3 — NEAT assessment results, for the whole Saronikos Gulf and the Spatial Assessment Units (SAUs) of Psittalia and Inner Saronikos Gulf before and after the secondary treatment in the Waste Water Treatment Plant (WWTP). Colors indicate the status: High: blue; Good: green; Moderate: yellow; Poor: orange and Bad: red. Source: Pavlidou et al., 2019

References

Borja, A., Elliott, M., Andersen, J.H., Berg, T., Carstensen, J., Halpern, S., et al., 2016a. Overview of integrative assessment of marine systems: the ecosystem approach in practice. Frontiers in Marine Science,3: 20.doi:10.3389/fmars.2016. 00020.

Pavlidou, A., N. Simboura, Κ. Pagou, G. Assimakopoulou, V. Gerakaris, I. Hatzianestis, P. Panayotidis, M. Pantazi, N. Papadopoulou, S. Reizopoulou, C. Smith, M. Triantaphyllou, M. C. Uyarra, I. Varkitzi, V. Vassilopoulou, C. Zeri, and Á. Borja, 2019. Using a holistic ecosystem-integrated approach to assess the environmental status of Saronikos Gulf, Eastern Mediterranean. Ecological Indicators, 96: 336-350