After four years’ hard work, spending just over 8 million
euros, the
Mapping
European
Seabed
Habitats Project (MESH) finally came to a
close at the end of January 2008. JNCC and our MESH Partners tied
together all the loose ends and submitted the final report to the
North West Europe INTERREG Secretariat at the end of March 2008.
So, was it worth all the effort and resources? In simple terms,
yes! The project delivered all its key products on time and within
budget, to the acclaim of our stakeholders.
JNCC with the support of the MESH Partners
published the MESH Blue Book, a glossy executive summary
describing all the achievements of the project. It is a highly
illustrated, non-technical document that will be easily digested by
both the non-specialist and technical mapping scientist. All the
key products are described, including links to the actual products
themselves, together with a closing summary of MESH partner views
on how these products will fit into the future policy agenda. All
the project outputs are available though the Product
Library.
At the outset, the MESH project’s goal was
to establish a framework for mapping the marine habitats of
north-west Europe through the development of internationally agreed
protocols and guidelines for seabed habitat mapping and the
generation of the first compiled marine habitat maps for the
north-west Europe. Did we achieve this goal?
MESH Guide to
Marine Habitat Mapping offers a framework for seabed
habitat mapping to help standardise future mapping activity, and to
improve the consistency of maps. It provides both a comprehensive
overview of the seabed habitat mapping process, and detailed
technical advice supported by tools, templates and actual case
studies. JNCC published a synopsis of the MESH Guide aimed
at the non-technical user who needs to gain a basic understanding
of the seabed habitat mapping process; it comes with a DVD of the
full guide for offline use.
The MESH
webGIS is a powerful interactive mapping system that
presents seabed maps for north-west Europe available through, the
project website. It includes both existing maps that were sourced
from many organisations by the MESH Partners, and new maps
predicting the distribution of seabed habitats using modelling
techniques researched by the project. The MESH webGIS
includes the ‘first compiled marine habitat map for north-west
Europe’ – a significant achievement by the MESH project
partners.
Now the project is complete and the pain and
frustrations forgotten, the partners can look back over the four
years though their rose-tinted spectacles and reflect on what the
project really did achieve. It was responsible for far more than
simply a series of maps, reports and web pages. The MESH
partnership itself is arguably the greatest achievement: 12
organisations from five countries came together to establish strong
professional and personal relationships, to work through
transnational cooperation on delivering an impressive range of
products. At the end, the MESH partnership remains intact and
whilst there are no current plans for a MESH II, groups of partners
are actively pursuing new ventures to take forward the MESH
outputs. So, whilst the MESH project is dead, long live the MESH
partnership!
Jon Davies
MESH Project Coordinator
Tel: 01733 866835
Email: