EUSeaMap - Mapping European seabed habitats

                                                                                   

EUSeaMap is a new project that will produce broad-scale predictive habitat maps for over 2 million square kilometres of European sea bed.

Building on the highly successful INTERREG IIIB-funded MESH and BALANCE projects, EUSeaMap will improve and harmonise predictive benthic habitat layers across the Celtic, North and Baltic Seas under the EUNIS classification, as well as undertaking broad-scale mapping of the western Mediterranean for the first time. A consortium of seven partners from five countries, led by the JNCC, are now working to develop data layers and thresholds, with the final product to be available publically through a webGIS by Autumn 2010.

This contract is funded by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, with the primary aim to support the implementation requirements of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD), specifically the Initial Assessments which all Member States must undertake in 2012. EUSeaMap is itself an integral part of the EC’s preparatory actions for a European Marine Observation Data Network (EMODNET) and a primary customer of many of the new data layers that are being produced by the initiative.

• Review and analyse existing broad-scale marine habitat mapping efforts in terms of methods used, data requirements and applications.
• Develop a common methodology for broad-scale seabed habitat mapping across Europe, specifically for the Baltic, North Sea, Celtic Seas and western Mediterranean sea basins.
• Introduce better quality habitat maps through the use of best available data and refined modelling processes
• Make the digital map layers available to stakeholders and develop an on-line mapping tool to display the layers incorporating a site to make the data available to the public.
• Assess the benefits and constraints of using broad-scale categories of the EUNIS marine hbaitat types, in comparison with the use of other regional variations and what shortcomings could be addressed by more accuracy and higher resolution.
• Demonstrate how the Marine Strategy Framework Directive Annex III requirements can be used in characterising the marine environment
• Contriubute towards INSPIRE implemntation standards.
• Determine the effort required to develop a complete broad-scale coverage of waters surrounding the European continent and that required to provide a more accurate, higher resolution survey-based mapping.

Find Out More:

• EUSeaMap partners
• UKSeaMap
• MESH project website
• BALANCE project website
• EUNIS habitat classification system