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Physical Damage (Reversible Change) – Penetration and/or disturbance of the substrate below the surface of the seabed, including abrasion 2016

Abstract

There are a growing number of human activities occurring within the marine environment. Concern over the possible impacts of these activities on the marine and coastal environment has led to the development of national, regional, and global commitments that aim to preserve, and, where possible, to mitigate impacts on marine environments (UKMMAS 2010).

Different human activities exert a variety of pressures and these pressures will, in turn, have different levels of impact on habitats and species. To enable management of these impacts, we need to better understand how human activities and biodiversity interact spatially and temporally. We can then assess the sensitivity of the habitats and species that are exposed to these activities, and thus the associated pressures. When combined, exposure and sensitivity provide an indication of a habitat’s ‘vulnerability’ to impacts.

To support this vulnerability assessment approach, JNCC is developing methods for creating geospatial pressure datasets for use at a regional and national scale. These datasets are created using a GIS to delineate their spatial extent and all activities that are known to exert the pressure are considered. In the UK one of the priority pressures on benthic habitats is Physical Damage – “Habitat structure changes – abrasion & other physical damage” hereafter referred to as ‘abrasion’, which is described as the “disturbance of sediments where there is limited or no loss of substrate from the system”.

This report was prepared from data available and research initiated in 2013. The extent of the Continental shelf has since been amended and further data for subsequent years is now available.

Resource type Publication

Topic category Environment

Reference date 2016·12·01

Citation
Church, N.J., Carter, A.J., Tobin, D., Edwards, D., Eassom, A., Cameron, A., Johnson, G.E., Robson, L.M. & Webb, K.E. 2016. JNCC Pressure Mapping Methodology. Physical Damage (Reversible Change) – Penetration and/or disturbance of the substrate below the surface of the seabed, including abrasion. JNCC Report No. 515. JNCC, Peterborough, ISSN 0963-8091.

Lineage
A prioritisation exercise was undertaken by JNCC to identify the relative importance of different pressures acting on benthic habitats in order to focus efforts on data collection and mapping for those pressures.

Responsible organisation
Communications, JNCC publisher

Limitations on public access No limitations

Use constraints Available under the Open Government Licence 3.0

Metadata date 2019·11·01

Metadata point of contact
Communications, JNCC

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