Identification

Title

Third UK Habitats Directive report (2013) - Habitat range boundary data

Abstract

This dataset contains the range map data for all the Habitats included as part of the 3rd UK Habitats Directive Report submitted to the European Commission in 2013. The range maps are derived from the distribution maps. Every six years, all EU Member States are required (under Article 17 of the Directive) to report on the implementation of the EU Habitats Directive. Most of the data are at the 10km square resolution and based on a standardised EU wide grid rather than GB and Ireland Grids. (The transformation process is described in the lineage section). The Report considered the conservation status of all terrestrial and marine habitats listed under Annex I of the Directive that were present within the UK during the reporting period (2007-2012). This included: *69 terrestrial habitats within the UK Atlantic region; *8 marine habitats within the UK Marine Atlantic region;

Resource type

dataset

Resource locator

http://data.jncc.gov.uk/data/d2529db8-ee0e-442a-91cc-1562c4543d79-UK-Art17-habitat-range.zip

name: UK-Art17-habitat-range.zip

Unique resource identifier

code

d2529db8-ee0e-442a-91cc-1562c4543d79

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Additional information source

http://jncc.defra.gov.uk/pdf/A17_2013_UKApproach.pdf

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

biota

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Freshwater

Marine

Terrestrial

European Reporting

Article 17

Habitats

Habitats Directive

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

-23.354927

East bounding longitude

4.275951

North bounding latitude

62.402988

South bounding latitude

47.146321

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

2007-01-01

End position

2012-12-31

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2013-10-21

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

A UK range map was created for each habitat to show the surface area included within its range. For terrestrial habitats this was done using: (i) the same 10-km square records provided by the Statutory Nature Conservation Bodies for the distribution map (see above); (ii) a slightly revised version (see below) of the range mapping tool used in the 2007 Article 17 Report (see http://jncc.defra.gov.uk/pdf/FCS2007_techI_alphashapes.pdf) ; and (iii) a more accurate boundary for the UK coastline compared to 2007. The mapping tool created a set of ‘best-fitting’ polygons around each series of 10-km squares. The habitat range surface area was based on the total area enclosed by each set of polygons. An adjustable ‘gap distance’ parameter of alpha was used to determine how tightly the polygons fitted. This was set at 25 km for all terrestrial habitats, meaning that gaps of over 50 km in the distribution were required to create separate polygons (note that a slightly different approach was used to join together polygons that were 20-30 km apart compared to 2007). The smallest (non-clipped) range unit was an individual 10-km square, except that all polygons were clipped along the coastline to exclude areas of sea, and a specific clipping was applied to coastal habitats (i.e. H1210 to H2250, excluding H1340) to exclude any areas more than 10-km inland from the coastline. In nearly all cases, the same alpha and coastal clipping values used in the 2007 Article 17 Report were applied. However, for H6210, H7110 and H7120 the alpha value was changed from 8 km in 2007 to 25 km, and for all coastal habitats the range was restricted to 10 km from the high water boundary, compared to 2007 when a quasi-1 km coastal buffer was applied. For the 8 marine habitats a different approach was used to create the UK range maps. This was done because in many cases their range was determined primarily by physical and geological processes occurring over long time-scales, and was not related to the biological communities and processes that they supported. The approach taken varied slightly between the marine habitats: · for H1130, H1140, H1150 and H1160 the UK range maps were taken as being equivalent to the UK distribution maps; · for H1170 the UK range map was developed from the UK distribution map, but additionally included an area of iceberg ploughmarks off North West Scotland in offshore waters, where cobble reefs had been recorded; · for H1110 the UK range map was taken as being the area of sloping sandy sediment habitat down to 60m and connected to sandbank habitat in less than 20m of water; · for H1180 and H8330 the UK range map was developed from the UK distribution map, but additionally included areas that had the potential for the habitat to occur based on an understanding of seabed geology. A standardised method was used to convert the UK range maps into the European ETRS grid for submission to the EC (see Appendix 5 of the UK Approach document for details http://jncc.defra.gov.uk/pdf/A17_2013_UKApproach.pdf ). This ETRS range map data was assembled into a shapefile covering both terrestrial and marine habitats.

Conformity

Data format

name of format

ESRI Arc/View ShapeFile

version of format

Unknown

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Released under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Attribution statement: "Contains public sector data © JNCC/NE/NRW/SNH/DOENI. Licence: OGL"

Limitations on public access

no limitations

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

organisation name

Digital and Data Solutions, JNCC

email address

data@jncc.gov.uk

responsible party role

custodian

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact

organisation name

Digital and Data Solutions, JNCC

email address

data@jncc.gov.uk

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata date

2018-05-17

Metadata language

eng