Marine Monitoring Handbook
(2001)
Davies, J., Baxter, J., Bradley, M., Connor, D., Khan, J., Murray, E., Sanderson, W., Turnbull, C. & Vincent, M.
The Marine Monitoring Handbook addresses the principles behind, and the procedures for, monitoring the habitats and species within marine SACs in UK waters to assess their condition. These assessments are intended to fulfil the requirements of the EC Habitats and Species Directive and the UK's common standards for monitoring.

Overview of Marine Monitoring Handbook (MMH)

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The UK Marine SACs project was set up to establish management schemes on selected marine Special Areas of Conservation (SACs). It focussed on twelve marine SACs around the UK coastline to build our knowledge and establish the best practise needed for the management and monitoring of marine sites. The Marine Monitoring Handbook is one of the key outputs of the project and will be used as guidance by the UK government's statutory nature conservation agencies and their key partners in drawing up monitoring schemes for marine SACs.
 
The Handbook provides guidance on the different options and their relative costs and benefits and describes best practise through a series of procedural guidelines for the common survey/monitoring techniques. It draws on the information gathered from extensive trials of different techniques and their deployment undertaken during the UK Marine SACs project to ensure all advice has a sound practical basis.
 
The Marine Monitoring Handbook should be viewed as a toolkit to assist those with responsibility for monitoring to select and use appropriate methods. It is not prescriptive, rather it aims to support good decision making in marine SAC monitoring in the light of resource availability and other practicalities.
Furthermore, as our practical knowledge of monitoring increases, and the marine monitoring requirements are addressed in greater detail within the European Union, the guidance set out in the Handbook is likely to change. The Handbook should, therefore, be considered as a live working document.
 
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Contact points for further advice

The source of advice will depend on the nature of the query. In general:
  • For clarification of any points in the text in this Handbook, queries should be addressed to the authors who are listed under each section, including the Procedural Guidelines; or
  • General queries, queries of a UK nature, or advice on common standards monitoring for marine SACs should be emailed to  (JNCC).
 

Future progress of the Marine Monitoring Handbook

Further work will be carried out to improve the coverage and content of the Handbook. In particular:
 
  • We will increase the number and range of Procedural Guidelines to cover all the techniques listed in Section 6 of the Handbook;
  • We will revise Sections 3 and 4 of the Handbook, taking account of further work to identify the most cost-effective design of monitoring programmes for particular Annex I habitats and Annex II species, and the level of skills needed to carry out the work;
  • We will improve the level of guidance in relation to Annex II species;
  • We will provide a glossary of terms and a bibliography divided by topic.

 

The Marine Monitoring Handbook will be maintained here on the JNCC Internet site, and this electronic version will be the most up-to-date copy available. Modifications to the Handbook, following the further work referred to above, will be incorporated into this version. We will develop a 'notice board' on this website to enable users to provide feedback on the Handbook. A mechanism, probably e-mail, will be established to alert users when new material, or revision of existing material, is published.
 
 
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405 pp
ISBN 1 85716 550 0
 
Please cite as: Davies, J., Baxter, J., Bradley, M., Connor, D., Khan, J., Murray, E., Sanderson, W., Turnbull, C. & Vincent, M., (2001), Marine Monitoring Handbook, 405 pp, ISBN 1 85716 550 0