In order for Program D7 – Hydrographical Changes to achieve compliance with GES, the primary recommendation is for Cyprus to reactivate program MALCY-D07 and sub program MALCY-07-01 to allow for the continuation of a suitable baseline to which historical and future impacts can be robustly assessed. It is also recommended that Cyprus perform a comprehensive environmental sensitivity index (ESI) analysis of its entire coastline at a frequency of every five years. The ESI analysis should consist of mapping, classification, and ground-truthing exercises. Mapping and classification exercises can be conducted primarily by desktop analysis of existing satellite imagery, much of which is updated within the time frames recommend here and is publicly available (i.e. Google Earth). Ground-truthing exercises can be conducted using site visits and commercially available and relatively inexpensive drones that provide high-quality imagery and pan and zoom capabilities. Conducting the ESI analysis at the recommended five-year frequency schedule will allow for a robust assessment and comparison of changes in land use, impervious surfaces, and point source and non-point source discharge sources along the coastline. Relatively frequent ESI mapping from the coastline to approximately 2 km inland could eventually allow for the conduct of a correlation analysis between anthropogenic development along the coastline, changes in hydrology, and climatic patterns over period of time that are long enough to tease out trends without the confounding factor of short-term variability such as seasonality or general weather patterns. Hydrographical changes of the offshore region can be assessed through records provided by oil and gas operators. The “Guidelines for an Offshore Environmental Baseline Survey for Oil & Gas Exploration Activities in Cyprus” requires operators to collect hydrographical casts (i.e. temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, pH) at several locations within their concessions during baseline studies. These records can be collated into a central database and compared over time to investigate any potential long-term trends in the offshore hydrographical conditions over time.

During implementation phase, good environmental status is achieved. Some issues are recognised as weak points: cumulative effect of minor impact of constructions near coast and illegal human activities. The spatial-temporal resolution of the wave measurements are week and additional effort must be invested to find the most appropriate way to obtain relevant data and / or new methods to estimate them.