Picking Up the Pieces—Harmonising and Collating Seabed Substrate Data for European Maritime Areas

Abstract

The poor access to data on the marine environment is a handicap to government decision-making, a barrier to scientific understanding and an obstacle to economic growth. In this light, the European Commission initiated the European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODnet) in 2009 to assemble and disseminate hitherto dispersed marine data. In the ten years since then, EMODnet has become a key producer of publicly available, harmonised datasets covering broad areas. This paper describes the methodologies applied in EMODnet Geology project to produce fully populated GIS layers of seabed substrate distribution for the European marine areas. We describe steps involved in translating national seabed substrate data, conforming to various standards, into a uniform EMODnet substrate classification scheme (i.e., the Folk sediment classification). Rock and boulders form an additional substrate class. Seabed substrate data products at scales of 1:250,000 and 1:1 million, compiled using descriptions and analyses of seabed samples as well as interpreted acoustic images, cover about 20% and 65% of the European maritime areas, respectively. A simple confidence assessment, based on sample and acoustic coverage, is helpful in identifying data gaps. The harmonised seabed substrate maps are particularly useful in supraregional, transnational and pan-European marine spatial planning.

Legacy Data: How Decades of Seabed Sampling Can Produce Robust Predictions and Versatile Products

“…The extent of the study was also increased compared to Stephens and Diesing [10], including areas of the continental shelf around Ireland, northern Scotland, the Norwegian Trough and the Skagerrak. Regional maps such as these avoid the inevitable artefacts that occur at the borders between different datasets, national boundaries or study area [4,35]. These are typically a result of maps derived from different datasets or under different methods.…”

“…The EMODnet-Geology theme aims at providing harmonised information on marine geology in Europe. One of the central products is a seabed substrate map of European maritime areas [4]. This map was compiled by harmonising substrate information from more than 30 countries and consolidating the data into a single map product with three unified substrate classification schemes based on a modification of the Folk classification [5].…”

Where’s the Carbon: Exploring the Spatial Heterogeneity of Sedimentary Carbon in Mid-Latitude Fjords

“…The first steps toward reducing uncertainty in the global OC burial estimates within fjords are to improve our understanding of the sediment heterogeneity at the seabed. Fjords, and coastal systems in general, are less well studied than the continental shelf where there is a generally good understanding of the spatial distribution of sediment types (Lark et al, 2012;Bockelmann et al, 2018;Wilson et al, 2018;Kaskela et al, 2019). In turn, such data provide insights into the potential spatial heterogeneity of OC on the continental shelf (Diesing et al, 2017).…”

Geomorphology and substrate of Galway Bay, Western Ireland

“…The final step was to groundtruth the acoustic classes using sediment samples. The sediment sample data underwent Particle size Analysis (PSA) and the resulting granulometric data were classified initially to Folk and then to a modified Folk as used by EMODnet Geology (Kaskela et al, 2019). The resulting seabed classification layer displays 4 substrate classes: rock, coarse sediment, sand and muddy sand to mud.…”