Restoring marine and coastal habitats in Wales: identifying spatial opportunities and benefits

Published by:
Natural Resources Wales
Last updated:
14 October 2025
Topic:
Not added
Licence:
None

Summary

In order to better understand opportunities to build resilience in the Welsh marine environment, a report was commissioned by Natural Resources Wales to identify potential spatial opportunities to restore valuable marine habitats. The report created spatial products (Arc Geo database) for: areas in the floodplain that might be suitable for the creation of mudflat and saltmarsh through managed realignment and areas where the right conditions might exist for native oyster habitat and horse mussel bed restoration. The horse mussel data was provided from JNCC. The report also addresses restoration potential for Sabellaria alveolata reefs although no spatial data was created for this habitat and seagrass habitat although this was provided as a map image from JNCC. These spatial Data layers should be considered as initial aides to identifying potential locations or areas but come with several limitations which have been discussed in the report. Any restoration projects should undergo further site validation and local engagement before proceeding with any specific site. The following GIS datasets were created for this: SaltmarshMudflatOpportunitiesOpportunitiesFloodplainsSMPpolicy NativeOysterOpportunities WaveHeightGridABPmerSeastates CurrentSpeedGridABPmerSeastates HistoricSaltmarshExtents Salveolatarecordshistoricandcurrent Oedulisrecordshistoricandcurrent Mmodiolusrecordshistoricandcurrent PotentialBeneficialUse_Sources

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Additional information

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Added to data.gov.uk
2024-05-31
Access contraints
Part of this dataset is sensitive and restricted as it contains data exempt from general release under EIR. Unrestricted parts of the dataset can be released under an Open Government Licence (OGL)
Harvest GUID
NRW_DS124923
Extent
Latitude: 53.513067° to °
Longitude: -5.777741° to -2.608865°
Spatial reference system
Dataset reference date
2022-07-21 (publication)
Frequency of update
notPlanned
Responsible party
Natural Resources Wales (NRW) (owner, custodian, distributor); ABP Marine Environmental Research Ltd (originator)
ISO 19139 resource type
dataset
Metadata language
eng
Source Metadata
XML
HTML

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