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Marine environment

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This section provides a collection of maps, statistics and web links displaying the main environmental characteristics of the Oceans, including protected areas, environmental changes and conservation issues. These items are available by clicking on Related Knowledge.

Photo title: Image from the Arctic Theme web page sponsored by NOAA's Arctic Research Office and developed by NOA

Photo credit: NOAA's Arctic Research Office

All (20)

Websites (10)

Multimedia (7)

Projects (3)

Title

UKSeaMap ( PROJECT )

Project Summary

The UKSeaMap project follows on from the Irish Sea Pilot study (ISP), which tested a regional seas approach to marine conservation management (Vincent et al. 2004). Part of the ISP investigated the concept of 'marine landscapes' (coastal, seabed and water column) and their ecological relevance (Golding et al. 2004). For the ISP, seabed and coastal marine landscapes were derived by integrating a number of geophysical attributes including bathymetry, seabed sediments, bedforms, maximum near-bed stress and other data, whilst the water column marine landscapes were based on two 'model derived', raster datasets for salinity and stratification (both supplied by Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory). The ecological relevance of the derived marine landscape units was tested by assessing the correlation with different biological communities, determining the degree to which a particular landscape could be used as a surrogate for biological communities. In general the Irish Sea marine landscapes were found to be ecologically valid. Based on this successful 'proof of concept' in the Irish Sea, this approach has now been adapted and extended to produce maps of seabed landscapes and seasonal water column features for the rest of UK waters. The outputs provide fundamental spatial information layers to support more effective management of marine resources and also support the implementation of existing international commitments and targets. One of the primary outputs of the project is an interactive web based mapping system giving access to the datasets used and maps created by the project. These datasets are also available for download from the project website. The final report, "UKSeaMap: The mapping of seabed and water column features of UK seas", is available from the project website.

Project Outputs

UK Seabed Landscapes Map UK Water Column Features Maps - spring, summer, winter and autumn UKSeaMap Report

Keywords