2014 RP2771 Baseline habitat mapping of the Alde, Ore and Butley SAC

The Alde, Ore and Butley Estuaries SAC is nationally and internationally important due its populations of breeding and overwintering birds. Within the Alde, Ore and Butley Estuaries there is a range of littoral sediment and rock biotopes (the latter on sea defences) that are of high diversity and species richness for estuaries in eastern England. Water quality is excellent throughout. The area is relatively natural, being largely undeveloped by man and with very limited industrial activity. The estuary contains large areas of shallow water over subtidal sediments, and extensive mudflats and saltmarshes exposed at low water. Its diverse and species-rich intertidal sand and mudflat biotopes grade naturally along many lengths of the shore into vegetated or dynamic shingle habitat, saltmarsh, grassland and reedbed. The features associated with the Alde-Ore and Butley Estuary are subtidal sediment communities including, Mid-shore areas of mixed substrata, covered by a blanket of the ephemeral algae Ulva lactuca and Enteromorpha spp. Tide swept communities present on the low shore, where the Alde joins the Butley, featuresanemones Sagartia spp., the peacock worm Sabella pavonina, the slipper limpet Crepidula fornicata and red algae. Well-sorted mud on the low shore throughout the estuary with a range of polychaetes.

Alternate title: GB100311

Date (Publication): 2021-06-18

Citation identifier: GB100311

Point of contact

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
Natural England		enquiries@naturalengland.org.uk	Originator

GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0

GEMET - Concepts, version 4.1.3

Access constraints: Other restrictions

Other constraints: no limitations to public access

Use constraints: Other restrictions

Other constraints: Available under Open Government Licence v3.0

Spatial representation type: Vector

Denominator: 80000

Language: English

Topic category

Biota
Oceans

Begin date: 2014-10-30

End date: 2022-10-07 After

Reference system identifier: http://www.opengis.net/def/crs/EPSG/0/4326

Distribution format

Name	Version
ESRI Shapefile	10.3
GML	3.2.1

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
WWW:LINK-1.0-http--link	https://files.emodnet-seabedhabitats.eu/data/EMODnetSBHsurvey_GB100311.zip	EMODnet Seabed Habitats Static Download
OGC:WMS	https://ows.emodnet-seabedhabitats.eu/geoserver/emodnet_view_maplibrary/wms	gb100311
OGC:WFS	https://ows.emodnet-seabedhabitats.eu/geoserver/emodnet_open_maplibrary/wfs	gb100311

Hierarchy level: Dataset

Conformance result

Title: Commission Regulation (EU) No 1089/2010 of 23 November 2010 implementing Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards interoperability of spatial data sets and services

Date (Publication): 2010-12-08

Explanation: This data set is conformant with the INSPIRE Implementing Rules for the interoperability of spatial data sets and services

Pass: Yes

Statement: Existing geophysical acoustic data were available from previous surveys, including multibeam and backscatter from Environment Agency commissioned surveys 2012-2013. The Alde and Ore also had comprehensive coverage of high resolution bathymetric and backscatter data available although the River Butley did not have any recent survey data available. In addition to the bathymetric and sidescan data for the Essex Estuaries SAC and Alde Ore and Butley Estuaries SAC, a national bathymetric dataset at a resolution of one arc second from the UKHO was employed to assist with the mapping of the areas of the SACs with no multibeam or backscatter coverage. The data for the SAC areas were extracted from the national dataset and plotted at a 25m resolution and artificially increased to 5m resolution for the Essex Estuaries and a 2m resolution for the Alde Ore and Butley Estuaries SAC which enabled the data to be combined with the higher resolution survey data which were available. The multibeam and sidescan data were compiled and processed at the highest resolution possible (5m and 2m) in order to delineate the requested features.

This map was extracted from the BSH polygon layer of the Natural England Evidence Base (June 2021) and formatted by JNCC according to the EMODnet Seabed Habitats Data Exchange Format v4.1 in September 2022.