Location of water course modifications (trenching, culverting, canalisation). The data was made available by HELCOM Contracting Parties in response to data request. The data was received from Estonia, Finland and Poland. Data reported by Finland and Poland as water course modification were interpreted as pipelines and were included in HELCOM HOLAS 2 Pipelines dataset. The activity was declared as not relevant in Germany and Lithuania. From Latvia, Russia and Sweden no data was reported.

The pressure layer represents biological pressure caused by introduction of non-indigenous species. The data is obtained from core indicator Trend in the arrival of new non-indigenous species (BSEP 129b: http://www.helcom.fi/Lists/Publications/BSEP129B.pdf). For the Baltic Sea Impact Index, the layer was normalized.

Data for Furcellaria harvesting presenting the amount of dredged tonnes per unit area per year. The data was made available by HELCOM Contracting Parties in response to data request. The data was received from Estonia. The activity was declared as not relevant in Denmark, Germany, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia and Sweden. Attribute specification and units: Dredged_ar: Furcellaria dredging area (km2, ND = no data available) Area: Area (fishing area) within dredging occurs (km2), area do not represent actual dredging area. 2011 - 2015: Amount of dredged Furcellaria (tonnes / year) Total: Amount (Sum) of dredged Furcellaria during 2011-2015 (tonnes) Average: Calculated annual average of the amount of dredged Furcellaria (tonnes/year)

The dataset contains data on bridges and other constructions. The dataset is constructed from Open Street Map “roads” shapefiles downloaded through Geofabrik by extracting all features where attribute bridges=1. It should be noted that the dataset contains major bridges and all other smaller constructions that have been classified as bridges in Open Street Map. The coverage for the dataset is whole Baltic.

This pressure dataset is derived from three human activities datasets - Urban land use (on land) - Recreational boating and sports (updated layer for 2018 version, please see separate http://metadata.helcom.fi/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/8c30e828-1340-4162-b7f9-254586ae32b6) - Bathing sites These data are described in more detail in separate fact sheets. Urban land use data was first converted to 1 km grid cells and expanded with 1 km. Thus, coastal urban areas extended also to the sea. These areas were given value 1 and other sea areas, value 0. Bathing sites (points) were converted to 1km grid and given value 1, rest of the sea areas were given value 0. Normalized recreational boating data was converted to 1 km grid cells. These three layers were summed to produce the layer (values from 0 to 3), after that the layer was normalized. Hunting and recreational fishing data were excluded from human disturbance layer, as they are mostly reported per country and would have resulted in overestimation of the actual pressure.

Constructed from EEA data on the status of bathing water. Downloaded from EEA homepage (http://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/data/bathing-water-directive-status-of-bathing-water-7). Contains information on the location and water quality of bathing sites 2011-2014. No data from Russia.

Pressure layer combines all human activities that cause changes to hydrological conditions. The human activities were presented as point data which were given spatial extents (given below). The pressure value was given as the proportion of the grid cell under the pressure. The following human activities were combined into the changes to hydrological conditions layer; - Hydropower dams (a 1km2 grid cell in the river estuary was selected) - Water course modification (1 km) - Wind turbines (operational, 0.3 km, linear decline) - Oil platforms (0.5 km, linear decline) The human activity datasets were first processed separately covering the whole Baltic Sea and then summed together and overlapping areas were dissolved to remove double counting. Attenuation gradients are assigned to each layer as described above. Area effected decreases when distance from avtivity increases. Layer was normalized.

Potential cumulative impacts on benthic habitats is based on the same method than http://metadata.helcom.fi/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/9477be37-94a9-4201-824a-f079bc27d097, but is focused on physical pressures and benthic habitats. The dataset was created based on separate analysis for potential cumulative impacts on only the benthic habitats, as these are particularly affected by physical pressures. In this case the evaluation was based on pressure layers representing http://metadata.helcom.fi/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/ea0ef0fa-0517-40a9-866a-ce22b8948c88 and http://metadata.helcom.fi/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/05e325f3-bc30-44a0-8f0b-995464011c82, combined with information on the distribution of eight broad benthic habitat types and five habitat-forming species (http://metadata.helcom.fi/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/363cb353-46da-43f4-9906-7324738fe2c3, http://metadata.helcom.fi/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/f9cc7b2c-4080-4b19-8c38-cac87955cb91, http://metadata.helcom.fi/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/264ed572-403c-43bd-9707-345de8b9503c, http://metadata.helcom.fi/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/822ddece-d96a-4036-9ad8-c4b599776eca and http://metadata.helcom.fi/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/ca327bb1-d3cb-46c2-8316-f5f62f889090). The potential cumulative impacts has been estimated based on currently best available data, but spatial and temporal gaps may occur in underlying datasets. Please scroll down to "Lineage" and visit http://stateofthebalticsea.helcom.fi/cumulative-impacts/ for more info.

Locations of the coastal protection structures. The dataset contains information about the coastal defence structure type and for some the structure length (m) and the year of construction. The data was made available by HELCOM Contracting Parties in response to data request. The data was received from Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Finland, Poland and Sweden. The activity was declared as not relevant in Lithuanian area. From Latvia and Russia no data was reported. Attribute specification and units Country: Country Type: Modification structure type Const_year: Year of construction Estimated: Estimated date of completion if under construction (Estonia) or the year of environmental permit if year of construction is lacking (Finland) Out_of_use: Year when costal defence structure has been taken out of use Measure: Additional information about the modification structure Length: Length of the modified coastline (m) width: Width of the modification structure (m) Area: Area of the modification structure (km2) X_Lon: Original X (Longitude) coordinate point (Finland)

This dataset contains point data describing the location of oil platforms in the Baltic Sea. The dataset is complete in Baltic sea coverage as it contains two known oil platforms.