indicator on number of occurrences in protected areas

[timadriaens]

Another very interesting indicator that we did not touch upon yet because of time constraints, is the proportion of occurrences of an alien species in protected areas. This is imo a very important one that can directly inform risk assessment but also risk management evaluations.

Ideally, this is a geographic subset of the weighted trend, but we need not make things too complicated. So, can we, based on the Area of Occupancy we already have, do an intersect with the N2000 network for Belgium (the official delimitation is on our gis server but probably best to take the one on EEA website)? It could be reported per year (e.g. since 2004, when Europe agreed on the Belgian N2000 areas) which is more interesting internationally and for other countries.

[damianooldoni]

Indeed, I don't think we really need gis server for it to have an estimate of it. We have number of occurrences per species/square (1kmx1km)/year. If we know which squares include the protected areas and which squares are included in the protected areas we can have max and min and so we can calculate mean and error.

The only work to do it is to define which squares of EEA include the protected areas or are included in it. @timadriaens : where can I find the shapefile?

[peterdesmet]

Since protected areas in Flanders are so small, we might have to work with raw occurrences rather than 1x1km squares. Not sure how to take the point-radius uncertainty into account though.

[qgroom]

Because the 1x1 data already takes into account uncertainty I would use that. The indicator's name might be Invasive Species in the vicinity of protected areas. Such an indicator is never going to replace a groundtruthing survey, but it would still be a good indicator.

[peterdesmet]

Ok, that makes sense and it's less work too.

[timadriaens]

I can simply do a "are completely within" select of utm1 squares in arcmap for now, but for the workflow, probably it's better to work towards something that would allow including other geo-layers

[timadriaens]

hmmm, so apparently finding a shapefile of Natura2000 in Belgium is cumbersome (not on EEA website, not on inspire dataportal and not on any belgian portal so it seems). It looks like we are going to have to stitch Fl, BR and Wal. We have done that already for another exercice but the shape is not perfect and as said, we probably want a procedure that is repeatable for other countries. I did find a layer of all Natura2000 in Europe here (750Mb) so we use this one and provide a select on country @damianooldoni ? I'll check this file first.

[amyjsdavis]

I would select by country as Tim suggested rather than stitching shapefiles together.

On Tue, Jul 2, 2019 at 10:27 AM Tim Adriaens notifications@github.com wrote:

hmmm, so apparently finding a shapefile of Natura2000 in Belgium is cumbersome (not on EEA website, not on inspire dataportal and not on any belgian portal so it seems). It looks like we are going to have to stitch Fl, BR and Wal. We have done that already for another exercice but the shape is not perfect and as said, we probably want a procedure that is repeatable for other countries. I did find a layer of all Natura2000 in Europe here https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/data/natura-10/natura-2000-spatial-data/natura-2000-shapefile-1 (750Mb) so we use this one and provide a select on country @damianooldoni https://github.com/damianooldoni ? I'll check this file first.

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[SoVDH]

Updated Maps/data should be accessible through EU N2000 reporting tool for Member States. People able to do it in WL are currently on holiday but I guess you can ask it to INBO people involved in/responsible for N2000 reporting.

[SoVDH]

Further info from the DEMNA cartographers here. It seems for WL, an aggregated N2000 layer is available at DEMNA. This WL layer could normally be used by TrIAS, but isn't open as it depends on a long public consultation process. On the EEA, there is a GIS data shapefile for whole EU including all BE : [https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/data/natura-1#tab-gis-data] According to colleagues here, N2000 area's delimitation do not seem to have changed from then.

[damianooldoni]

Thanks @SoVDH : from your link I see that it is an archived version. However, there is the link to download the updated version: https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/data/natura-10. I will give a look on it.

[timadriaens]

@SoVDH That is the layer I was talking about and we are checking whether it is ok by comparing it with the one our gis team produced. We also need the marine part on it.

[timadriaens]

Checked and good for use, the one on INBOs gis server is the same but just a clip for Belgium. In this layer (in ETRS 1989 LAEA projection as inspire requires), in the attributes table we can:

• select on member state 'BE' (that way other countries could use the pipeline and select on theirs?)
• select on area type A (Bird's Directive, green), B (Habitat's Directive, red) or C (both, black). In WAL most areas have both designations.

Most people when they refer to Natura2000 actually refer to areas of the Habitat's directive (in which case we would need to select on B + C). Alternatively, we could consider N2000 as a whole and present the indicator for Habitat and Bird directive areas separately. What do you think @damianooldoni @SoVDH ? Looking at the map, this could make a big difference for the marine.

@damianooldoni do you want us to make an overlay with utm1 and calculate %surface area overlap, we can then decide on a cut-off level (e.g. at least 80% overlap) to assign 1km utm squares to natura2000 areas?

[SoVDH]

I would go for the one including all sites so (Habitats + Birds) merged if I understand well.

[timadriaens]

We can do both SACs and SPAs, but for me they are a bit different for various reasons. A few considerations:

• Brussels only has SACs
• Wallonia hardly has any SPAs that are not coinciding with SACs
• including SPAs in the marine adds a lot to the total protected area there
• The presence of non-natives is policy-wise much more impactful in SACs through the conservation status assessments (Art 17) which include criteria on non-natives (presence and cover) e.g. good conservation status of white dunes requires a cover of <1% of Senecio inaequidens, Corispermum leptopterum or Conyza canadensis
• For future refining of this indicator one could envisage the same indicator at the level of Annex I habitats themselves of which maps also exist (e.g. the yearly occupancy of Senecio inaequidens in white dunes)

So I suggest when we set up this indicator we take the effort of calculating occurrences in 1. only SAC (Habitat's directive areas), 2. only SPA (Bird Directive areas) and 3. all Natura2000 (this is not simply the sum as they overlap), because if we merge them now it will be difficult afterwards to split them up. We can still decide to only show Natura2000 as a whole. As N2000 is quite static since 2013 I don't think this will pose any problems.

[SoVDH]

Ok. My 'merging' I rather meant having both onboard and not dropping one category. Your suggestion is fine with me

[timadriaens]

in case you ever have to find inspire-proof belgian maps online (none of my colleagues were aware) these are useful:

• http://inspire-geoportal.ec.europa.eu/
• https://www.geo.be/#!/home?l=nl

[damianooldoni]

The intersection of EEA 1x1km reference grid and Natura2000 protected area is ready and it is saved in this file in /data/output/intersect_EEA_ref_grid_protected_areas.tsv.

As discussed with @ToonVanDaele and @timadriaens , this file assesses which cells intersect with any protected area (natura2000, SPA and habitat) by means of TRUE or FALSE values as shown in example here below:

CELLCODE	EOFORIGIN	NOFORIGIN	geometry	natura2000	spa	habitat
1kmE3768N3188	...	...	...	FALSE	FALSE	FALSE
1kmE3850N3136	...	...	...	TRUE	FALSE	TRUE
1kmE3850N3146	...	...	...	TRUE	TRUE	FALSE

The pipeline to generate the file is a Rmd file: ./src/_define_overlay_grid_belgium_with_protected_areas.Rmd.

[ToonVanDaele]

This is very nice! Works fine using read.table with sep = "\t". I'll include this in the analysis ASAP.

[damianooldoni]

I close this issue as it has been solved. We use cells and obs in protected areas in the workflow. Any 1x1km cell which intersects any protected area is taken into account. Results of the model on this subset of occurrences/cells is used in ranking as presence in protected areas is more important than presence outside.