The Global Mangrove Watch (GMW) was initiated as part of the JAXA Kyoto & Carbon Initiative in 2011. It is led by Aberystwyth University and solo Earth Observation, in collaboration with Wetlands International, the International Water Management Institute and the UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre (U.K.). The African part is supported by DOB Ecology through the Mangrove Capital Africa project. The GMW aims to provide geospatial information about mangrove extent and changes to the Ramsar Convention, national wetland practitioners, decision makers and NGOs. It is part of the Ramsar Science and Technical Review Panel (STRP) work plan for 2016-2018 and a Pilot Project to the Ramsar Global Wetlands Observation System (GWOS), which is implemented under the GEO-Wetlands Initiative. The primary objective of the GMW has been to provide countries lacking a national mangrove monitoring system with first cut mangrove extent and change maps, to help safeguard against further mangrove forest loss and degradation. The GMW has generated a global baseline map of mangroves for 2010 using ALOS PALSAR and Landsat (optical) data, and changes from this baseline for epochs between 1996 and 2020 derived from JERS-1 SAR, ALOS PALSAR and ALOS-2 PALSAR-2. Annual maps are planned from 2018 and onwards.

Known occurrences of habitat types 1110, 1130, 1140, 1150, 1160 and 1170 according to Annex I Habitats Directive

Mapping of marine Natura2000 habitats. The mapping campaign was carried out in 2017.

Mapping of marine Natura2000 habitats. The mapping campaign was carried out in 2017.

Mapping of marine Natura2000 habitats. The mapping campaign was carried out in 2017.

The Algarve coast presents a significant portion of territory that is part of the designated National Nature Reserve, in its underwater slope (0 to 30m depth - RENSUB), especially when compared with the equivalent on land. The current digital map presents the EUNIS habitat of the central Algarve RENSUB coast. The covered area is between Ponta Piedade and Barra do Ancão. The sediment classification was obtained through the interpretation of data from Side Scan Sonar (remote-sensing image), while for the habitat mapping the biological sampling was carried out with beam trawl and underwater visual census.

Mapping of marine Natura2000 habitats. The mapping campaign was carried out in 2017.

Mapping of marine Natura2000 habitats. The mapping campaign was carried out in 2017.

The targeted area in Greece is the Protected Area of northern Karpathos and Saria (GR4210003). According to the standard form of the SCI, its marine part has an area of 5181.74 ha, i.e. about 45% of its total area, which includes habitat 1110, habitat 1120, habitat 1170 and habitat A5.531.Bottom substrates were surveyed with a DeepVision (DE3468D) portable side scan sonar trawled on the ÔÇ£SariaÔÇØ vessel with a high precision GPS system. The survey vessel performed a number of transects in the study sub-areas, in most cases parallel to the shoreline and with an overlap of the scanned area of the bottom between two adjacent transect lines. All data were continuously recorded onboard the survey vessel on a computer with the appropriate software systems installed . Additionally, the BlueRobotics, BLUE ROV2 (ver. heavy duty) underwater drone was used for ground truthing of the different habitat types. The sonograms of the scanned area were later used for the creation of substrate type maps of the area. Data analysis was performed with the software products DeepView Pro for the side scan sonar data, and QGIS3.12 for the creation of substrate and overview maps. Data exported in KML format by DeepView and transformed in shape files in QGIS. Polygons of the same habitat were merged so each feature within the shapefile is assigned to each habitat. To ensure that the data will display properly the shapefiles were cleaned by removing any geometry or topology errors. The shape length and area was calculated and all habitats visualized via Geoserver on MedOBIS viewer (https://portal.lifewatchgreece.eu/) in WGS84 coordinate system (EPSG:4326). An OGC standard for geospatial styling (Styled Layer Descriptor (SLD)) was used through Geoserver to create styles for each layer. The Open Street Map was used as a basemap, as it is an updated open source map.

Soft bottom sandy 1110 habitats within the BB0000146 'Gradina-Zlatna ribka' SCI area. Mapped and created by IBER-BAS within the BalkanMed RECONNECT project ( 2017-2020)