Habitat maps of the marine environment are required to provide
a better understanding of the distribution and extent of marine
habitats, both in particular
protected
areas and across the wider environment. Knowledge of the
distribution and extent of marine habitats serves to establish
sensible approaches to the conservation needs of each habitat and
to facilitate better management of the marine environment through
an understanding of how particular human activities are undertaken
in relation to marine habitats.
Mapping methods
With increasing pressure being put on our coastal and offshore
marine environment through industry and leisure activities, new
methods and technologies have developed in recent years to allow
rapid site evaluation and appraisal. Such technologies include
multi-beam echo-sounding, side-scan sonar and acoustic ground
discrimination systems. These remote sensing techniques combined
with ground-truthing techniques such as sediment grabs, camera tows
and dredging can be used to create detailed habitat maps.
Current and recent work
JNCC collates such habitat maps and makes them freely
available to view and download from the
EMODnet Seabed
Habitats portal in the
EUNIS classification. This website is a
product of the JNCC-led international marine habitat mapping
programme entitled 'Development of a framework for Mapping European
Seabed Habitats', or MESH for short, which ran from 2004 to 2008.
It was further developed through funding from the MESH Atlantic
project, which ran from 2010 to 2013.
To fill gaps between small, detailed habitat maps, as
described above, broad-scale predictive habitat maps have been
produced based on broad physical categories. The
UKSeaMap 2010 project
updated a seabed habitat map for the entire UK continental shelf
area using this method. UKSeaMap 2010 used the
EUNIS habitat
classification system to classify seabed habitats, with some new
proposed habitat classes for the deep-sea area, which are currently
being considered as part of JNCC's work on marine habitat
classification for
Britain & Ireland and as part of the
EUNIS scheme.
Using a very similar approach to UKSeaMap 2010, the
EUSeaMap project produced
a seabed habitat map for over 2 million square kilometres of
European seabed across the North, Celtic, Baltic and western
Mediterranean seas. This project is funded by the European
Commission's Directorate-General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries
and will support the implementation of the
Marine Strategy Framework Directive.
Completed projects
A
Review of Marine Nature Conservation (RMNC)
was established in 1999, by Defra, to examine how effectively the
UK system for protecting nature conservation in the marine
environment is working and make proposals for improvements. The
final report was submitted to Ministers in 2004. As a contribution
to the RMNC a pilot scheme was undertaken in the Irish Sea to test
the potential for an ecosystem approach to managing the marine
environment at a regional sea scale. The
Irish Sea
Pilot project led by JNCC, ran between 2002 and 2004 and
included the development of a broad-scale ecological map of seabed
and water column features - 'marine landscape' maps. This approach
to broad-scale mapping was extended in the
UKSeaMap 2006 project to cover the rest of
the UK continental shelf.
Guidance
In 2001, JNCC produced a
Marine
Monitoring Handbook that holds procedural guidelines to many
habitat mapping techniques and technologies. Further work was
carried out by the MESH project to produce a set of
Recommended
Operating Guidelines, which describe marine mapping techniques
in a habitat mapping context. The Marine Environmental Data and
Information Network (
MEDIN) has since improved some of
these guidelines and also developed additional guidance; these can
be found on the
data guidelines section of the MEDIN website.
Collaboration
In addition, JNCC contributes to International Council for the
Exploration of the Sea (
ICES)
work on marine habitat mapping through the ICES Working Group on
Marine Habitat Mapping (WGMHM). JNCC’s David Connor was chair of
the ICES WGMHM between 2003 and 2009. JNCC also provides advice to
the UK conservation agencies (
Natural Resources Wales
(formally Countryside Council for Wales - CCW), Northern
Ireland Environment Agency, SNH, Natural England), Government
bodies and others on various mapping techniques and
technologies.