Report 515
Physical Damage (Reversible Change) – Penetration and/or disturbance of the substrate below the surface of the seabed, including abrasion
(2016)
Church, N.J., Carter, A.J., Tobin, D., Edwards, D., Eassom, A., Cameron, A., Johnson, G.E., Robson, L.M. & Webb, K.E.
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.
Introduction
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 are 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 the subsequent years is now
available.
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ISSN 0963-8901
Please cite as: Church, N.J., Carter, A.J., Tobin, D., Edwards, D., Eassom, A., Cameron, A., Johnson, G.E., Robson, L.M. & Webb, K.E., (2016), Physical Damage (Reversible Change) – Penetration and/or disturbance of the substrate below the surface of the seabed, including abrasion, JNCC Report 515, ISSN 0963-8901