Luce Bay and Sands SAC is a broad, shallow embayment on the south-west coast of Scotland. The site has been designated for four qualifying Annex I habitat types Large shallow inlets and bays, Sandbanks which are slightly covered by seawater at all times, Intertidal mudflats and sandflats and Reefs. The aim of this project was to derive broadscale maps for the intertidal and subtidal Annex 1 habitats within the SAC. Because of the size of Luce Bay, it was decided that remote sensing supported by ground truthing of the data would be the most cost-effective way of mapping the habitats within the site. The intertidal would be surveyed using satellite imaging and the sublittoral environment would be surveyed using acoustic survey. Ground truthing would be undertaken by direct observation, where access allowed, in the intertidal and by a combination of video observation and grab sampling in the sublittoral.
