Bringing together harmonized EUNIS seabed habitat geospatial information for the European Seas

Abstract

The EUNIS-compliant information on Seabed Habitats that is currently available from the EMODNET portal covers only about half of the European Union (EU) waters in the Northeast Atlantic and adjacent Seas. This work focused on expeditiously obtaining a comprehensive coverage of permanently submerged seabed habitats (i.e., EUNIS classes A3 to A6) throughout this area for purposes of mapping seabed-related ecosystem functions and services. This was achieved by bringing in, and harmonizing where needed, complementary EUNIS-compliant broad-scale geospatial information from the UNEP’s Global Seafloor Geomorphic Features Map (GSGFM). The new geospatial dataset obtained, a polygon shapefile, extends for approximately 8.7 million km and more than doubles the coverage of EUNIS seabed habitat classes when compared to the datasets available from the EMODNET portal. It details more than 90% of the EU waters down to EUNIS level 2 and 3 and a small part down to level 5. It significantly improves EMODNET datasets by populating the deep-sea and offshore areas with previously disregarded geomorphic-based EUNIS habitat classes. The methodology and some area-based statistics on seabed habitats are presented, including overall and basin-specific mapped extents.