UK Marine Noise Registry: Underwater Impulsive Noise Events

UK Marine Noise Registry outputs map the distribution and duration of impulsive underwater noise events across UK marine waters for specific calendar years. The data uses a standardized grid of 10-minute latitude by 12-minute longitude blocks, measuring activity in Pulse Block Days (PBD). It includes associated activity types and is intended to support assessments under the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive.

Use Cases

• Mapping noise pollution hotspots based on the Pulse Block Day (PBD) metric and the UK oil and gas licensing grid.
• Analyzing trends in impulsive noise sources by activity type across UK marine waters.
• Assessing compliance with marine strategy indicators for underwater noise, based on the documented frequency range (10 Hz to 10 kHz, with multibeam echosounders up to 12 kHz).
• Integrating spatial noise data with other marine datasets using the provided shapefiles and data tables.

Strengths

• Data is structured using a standardized spatial grid (10' lat x 12' long blocks), enabling consistent geospatial analysis.
• Includes specific caveat documents and a data dictionary for informed interpretation.
• Covers a defined temporal scope (full calendar years 2016 and 2017) for UK marine waters.

Limitations

• Key metadata such as row count, file size, license, and author are consistently missing across all source entries.
• Column names and detailed schema are not provided, limiting immediate understanding of the tabular data structure.
• The 'last updated' metadata (2026) appears to be a platform artifact and conflicts with the dataset's stated content year (2017).

Provenance

Source

Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC) via the UK Marine Noise Registry (MNR).

Collection Method

Registry-based compilation of reported impulsive noise events from activities like oil and gas exploration.

Time Range

2016 to 2017

Freshness

2026-04 14 (platform metadata, but conflicts with dataset year)

Geography

UK marine waters (UK Exclusive Economic Zone)