Review of Marine Nature Conservation
(RMNC) and the Irish Sea
Pilot Project
A
Review of
Marine Nature Conservation (RMNC) was established in 1999, by
Defra, to examine how effectively the UK system for protecting
nature conservation in the marine environment is working and make
proposals for improvements. An interim report was submitted
to Ministers in March 2001. One of the key recommendations was to
undertake a pilot scheme, at the regional sea scale, to test the
potential for an ecosystem approach to managing the marine
environment at a regional sea scale. The
Irish
Sea Pilot project, led by JNCC commenced in 2002 and has now
completed its research. The final report and other outputs from the
Pilot project are now available for
download.
The mapping of marine seabed landscapes and water
column features of UKseas
(UKSeaMap)
UKSeaMap proposes to extend the work and
outputs of the Irish Sea Pilot project to the sea area under UK
jurisdiction, by taking a geophysical approach using available
physical datasets, and building on the methodology developed during
the Review of Marine Nature Conservation (RMNC) to integrate,
define and map landscape types. It is thought that the project will
be implemented in two stages:
Stage 1: Deriving landscape units from existing geophysical
information for: (a) seabed features and (b) water column
features.
Stage 2: Exploring the ecological validity of landscape units
using biological information.
MESH
JNCC is leading an international marine habitat mapping
programme entitled 'Development of a framework for Mapping European
Seabed Habitats', or
MESH for short, which started in spring 2004 and
will last for 3 years. A consortium of 12 partners across the UK,
Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium and France gained financial
support from the EU INTERREG IIIB fund for an international marine
habitat mapping programme.
Other