Habitat point records from 1991 MNCR Ravenglass, Duddon & Ribble estuaries littoral survey
The Ribble, Duddon and Ravenglass estuary systems drain into the eastern basin of the Irish Sea. These estuaries have general west to east orientation which gives rise to a marked gradient of decreasing wave exposure with increasing distance east. In contrast, there is a salinity gradient of low salinity at the tidal limit in the east to near full salinity at the entrance of the estuary in the west. The Ribble Estuary has been extensively modified by man and receives a considerable anthropogenic input of waste material. In contrast, the Duddon and Ravenglass estuary systems are set in rural areas with little anthropogenic influence. Habitats within these estuaries are predominantly sedimentary with occassional small areas of small stones and shingle on the surface of the sediment. Hard substrata is restricted to man-made structures such as coast protection, training walls and railway bridges. Consequently, habitat diversity was low with only ten community types identified within the three estuarine systems. Communities on hard substrata had a low species richness and low abundance which was probably a consequence of low salinity, siltation and/or tidal scour. Sedimentary communities were characterised by infaunal species with few epibenthic species recorded. At the entrance to these estuaries, mobile medium and fine sand flats had a low species richness with occasional polychaetes and crustaceans. In the middle estuaries, sediment became muddier and species richness initially increased with infaunal communities characterised by polychaetes, burrowing crustaceans and bivalve molluscs. With increasing distance up the estuary towards the tidal limit, sediment changed to mud and the ambient salinity declined. Species richness of the infaunal community decreased, the communities were characterised by oligochaete worms and burrowing crustaceans. At the tidal limit, marine species richness declined to zero and freshwater species were recorded. Beware! the infauna has been entered in the epifauna window
dataset
name: 1991-MNCR-Ravenglass-Duddon-Ribble-estuaries-littoral-survey.csv
3e4b28f1-b3f6-4f9f-8d62-116ad0c0c425
eng
Davies (1992) Littoral survey of the Ribble, Duddon and Ravenglass estuary systems, east basin of the Irish Sea
oceans
Marine
Marine Recorder
JNCCMNCR10000038
Habitat
MNCR
-3.494825134
-2.698422336
54.37725034
53.71038841
1991-07-11
1991-11-17
publication
2001-08-29
This survey was extracted from a Marine Recorder snapshot.
Comma Separated Values
Unknown
Open Government Licence v3.0
no limitations
Digital and Data Solutions, JNCC
custodian
Digital and Data Solutions, JNCC
pointOfContact
2018-05-17