Publication Abstract

Worldwide, the oceans and marginal seas are under increasing pressure from human activities and there is an increasing need for accurate seabed and habitat maps to underpin environmental and socio-economic impact assessments, and to assist in the development of effective management measures that will contribute to our responsible stewardship of the marine environment and the sustainable use of its resources. Rather than motivated by exploration science, specific policy requirements now drive the development and application of habitat mapping. In Europe, national legislation (e.g. the Marine and Coastal Access Act in the UK) and several European Directives (e.g. the Marine Strategy Framework Directive) require an improved understanding and characterisation of seabed habitats, and thus improved methods to support the mapping and monitoring of seabed habitats.

It is against this background that we coordinated a “MAREMAP Acoustic Data Interpretation Workshop” in Edinburgh on 23^rd and 24^th October 2012. The workshop was centred on a common data set exercise: Multibeam echosounder and physical seabed sampling data were made available prior to the workshop. Participants were asked to interpret the data sets in terms of seabed sediments, by applying their preferred methodology. The methods presented included manual interpretation, object-based image analysis, geostatistics and machine learning. The similarity of the produced maps was compared against each other, and the results were discussed and compared during the workshop. The accuracy of the maps was assessed against a validation data set of sampling data. Clear advantages and disadvantages associated with the respective methods emerged. This presentation summarises the main outcomes of the common data set exercise.