UK waters contain geospatial data showing the potential and high confidence mapped extents of Annex I 'Reef' habitat. The dataset was produced by the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, with version 8.3 released in 2022. It includes rocky areas or concretions made by marine animals that arise from the seafloor.
Use Cases
- Designating marine protected areas based on mapped reef habitat extents.
- Assessing habitat distribution for environmental impact assessments based on geospatial reef data.
- Monitoring changes in reef habitat coverage over time using versioned polygon data.
- Informing fisheries management decisions by identifying areas of protected reef habitat.
Strengths
- Dataset is versioned, with specific corrections documented for versions 8.1, 8.2, and 8.3.
- Includes both 'potential' and 'high confidence' mapped extents of reef habitat.
- Produced by the authoritative Joint Nature Conservation Committee.
Limitations
- Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
- Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
- Data may reflect geographic bias inherent to uk_data.
Provenance
- Source
- Joint Nature Conservation Committee
- Collection Method
- Likely contains geospatial mapping and expert validation, as described in version updates.
- Freshness
- Last updated 2026-04-14 09:48:12.834465; freshness should be verified.
- Geography
- UK waters