Integrated geospatial datasets to inform marine spatial planning and impact assessment in waters surrounding the United Kingdom

Abstract

The rapid expansion of human activity in coastal and shelf seas provides impetus to investigate increased risks to ocean health and social-ecological resilience, but progress in understanding the role and relative importance of associated pressures is frustrated by a lack of a routinely available set of processed geospatial information. Here, we pool 337 standardised geospatial layers derived from 35 sources, including anthropogenic activities, ecological and geoscience assets and features, and met-ocean conditions for the exclusive economic zone surrounding the United Kingdom. Our compilation has undergone pre-processing: spatial interpolation, density estimation, data resampling and extraction, and harmonisation to populate ~10 km2 grids. We provide source version history, an open-access interactive portal, and the details of the spatial processes we used to create each layer, including data quality and uncertainties for layers generated by interpolation/density estimation. Our motivation is to provide reference information and spatio-temporal context, encourage the exploration and inclusion of any inter-dependencies between layers when determining system response, improve mechanistic understanding of observed patterns, and enable better parameterisation of models for those tasked with assessing the compound and cumulative effects of anthropogenic activity.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Hugo Putuhena: orcid.org/0000-0003-1947-6984

ORCID for Tom Williams: orcid.org/0000-0002-6616-955X

ORCID for Fraser Sturt: orcid.org/0000-0002-3010-990X

ORCID for Dave White: orcid.org/0000-0002-2968-582X

ORCID for Martin Solan: orcid.org/0000-0001-9924-5574

ORCID for Jasmin Godbold: orcid.org/0000-0001-5558-8188

ORCID for Susan Gourvenec: orcid.org/0000-0002-2628-7914

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