Marine Habitat Mapping Framework (MESH)
Industrial development in European seas is leading to an
increased risk of conflict between marine users. This, in turn,
could lead to a greater potential for environmental damage. Yet
scientists agree that we probably know more about the surface of
the moon than we know about what lives on the bottom of our seas,
and where precisely it can be found.
Marine habitat maps are a valuable tool for managing the
sustainable use and conservation of shoreline coastal and offshore
areas. The principal purpose of the MESH project is
to harmonise the way in which such mapping initiatives are done in
the northwest European area. This is so that future mapping
programmes produce compatible outputs that can contribute to a
growing international resource to support marine spatial planning
and management.
Objectives
MESH aims not only to produce a detailed and standardised marine
habitat atlas for European waters, but also to provide a template
for all marine-habitats surveys in any part of Europe.
The following will be developed by the project:
- standards and protocols for surveying and mapping shoreline and
seabed habitats
- a standard methodological approach for the application of
remote-sensing and direct-sampling techniques, in the context of
habitat-mapping projects
- approaches to habitat-modelling
- the concept of seabed "landscapes" to describe the
bio-geo-physical nature of habitats over large areas, facilitating
management at regional, national and international levels.
One of the most exciting outputs from this project has been the
delivery of the MESH Guide
to Marine Habitat Mapping. This web-based, interactive,
multi-media tool takes visitors through the processes and decisions
required to design, carry out and interpret a marine survey. Tools
and applications to assist with all the processes of habitat
mapping are also available as free downloads.
Cefas contribution
We contributed underwater surveying and mapping expertise plus
images of the seabed. Recent advances in acoustic technology
enabled us to take high-resolution images of the seabed. These
images show, for instance, sand banks, rocky outcrops and gravel
patches. However, to find out what lives in or on the seabed,
we "ground-truth" the acoustic images, using direct sampling
techniques. For this project we have mapped the seabed by using a
combination of techniques.
Project details
This project had 12 partners from five different
countries. It co-ordinated by the Joint Nature Conservation
Committee here in the UK, and was supported by the European
Commission's INTERRED IIIB Fund.