Marine Habitats and Species in England's Protected Areas, 1952-2025

A 2025 collation of marine habitat and species biotope records from contracts commissioned by Natural England, Defra, and third-party contributors. The dataset comprises six sub-datasets, including one point and five polygonal feature classes, representing publicly available data held by Natural England. It is provided as an ESRI File Geodatabase with an ESRI structured layer file.

Use Cases

• Mapping the distribution of marine biotopes based on polygonal feature classes.
• Analyzing species and habitat presence within legally designated Marine Protected Areas based on the subset dataset.
• Validating marine spatial planning decisions using collated records from multiple government and academic sources.

Strengths

• Contains six distinct sub-datasets (feature classes) for detailed analysis.
• Geometry has been validated using the ESRI validation method.
• Data is sourced from multiple authoritative bodies including Natural England, Defra, and academic institutions.

Limitations

• Geometry may not comply with Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) specifications as it was not validated using that method.
• Row count and specific column-level documentation are unknown, limiting suitability assessment.
• The description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.

Provenance

Source

Natural England, Defra, and associated bodies/agencies, plus third-party contributors.

Collection Method

Collated from commissioned contracts, collected data, and third-party data republished under the Open Government Licence.

Time Range

Records span from 1898 to 2025, based on contributor copyright dates.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-29 12:04:38.804256

Geography

England