Marine Habitats
Conventions and Legislation
OSPAR - Oslo and Paris Convention
EC Habitats Directive
EU Water Framework Directive
Convention on Biological Diversity
Data Management
Monitoring and surveillance
Habitat Mapping
EUNIS Classification
Marine Habitat Classification

Mapping OSPAR priority habitats

In 2003, the Biodiversity Committee agreed to a programme to map the distribution of priority habitats on OSPAR's initial list (PDF, 126kb). The programme is being led by JNCC who have co-ordinated the submission of data on the distribution of each habitat type within the territories of each Contracting Party.

The data have been collated to provide preliminary maps for each of the 14 OSPAR priority habitats. These were presented to the Biodiversity Committee in February 2005, who agreed to extend the programme to allow for additional data to be submitted to improve the quality of the maps. A web-based GIS application has been developed to disseminate the maps as an extension of the National Biodiversity Network (NBN) web mapping application. It will continue to be updated as new data becomes available.