State of the soft-bottom macrofauna community 2018

The indicator evaluates the status of the soft-bottom macrofauna community above the permanent halocline in the open sea areas of the Baltic Sea. Quantitative thresholds are used to classify the core indicators status in Achieve, Fail or Not assessed. The current assessment result shows good status in most of the evaluated assessment units. The indicator is not used in coastal areas which are assessed by national methods or in areas below the halocline which are assessed using the Oxygen debt indicator. The indicator takes into account the relative proportion of sensitive and tolerant species, as well as species richness and abundance. This dataset displays the result of the indicator in HELCOM Assessment Scale 3 (Division of the Baltic Sea into 17 sub-basins and further division into coastal and off-shore areas), so that the indicator is only applicable in the open sea assessment units. "HELCOM_ID" = HELCOM assessment unit scale 3 ID "country" = Country "level_2" = Name of scale 2 HELCOM assessment unit "level_3" = Name of scale 3 HELCOM assessment unit "area_km2" = "Area (km2)" = Area of HELCOM assessment unit "coastal" = Code of scale 3 HELCOM assessment unit "open_sea" = Name of the open sea area "AULEVEL" = Assessment unit level used for the indicator "Threshold value" = Indicator threshold value "Indicator value" = Value of the indicator "Status" = Status of the indicator (“Achieve”, “Fail” or “Not assessed”) "ConfA" = confidence of classification "ConfT" = Temporal confidence of classification "ConfS" = Spatial confidence of classification "ConfM" = Methodological confidence of classification