Coastal Biodiversity and Ecosystem Service Sustainability (CBESS) projected area of vegetation in saltmarsh habitats

The dataset contains estimates of the projected area of vegetation derived from the analysis of side-on photographs through the vegetation canopy and recorded for survey quadrats at six UK saltmarsh sites. Three of the sites were in Morecambe Bay, North West England and three of the sites were in Essex, South East England, each of these sites consisted of a saltmarsh area and adjacent mudflat area. Each site comprised 22 quadrats in the vegetated area of salt marsh. A calibrated camera was used to photograph through a 600 x 200mm section of vegetation against a red background. Calibrated images were then classified into vegetation and background classes and parameters of vegetation density in the horizontal were computed. This data was collected as part of Coastal Biodiversity and Ecosystem Service Sustainability (CBESS): NE/J015644/1. The project was funded with support from the Biodiversity and Ecosystem Service Sustainability (BESS) programme - is a six-year programme (2011-2017) funded by the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) as part of the UK's Living with Environmental Change (LWEC) programme. Full details about this dataset can be found at https://doi.org/10.5285/936e04d0-c8ae-47ec-a858-518a77667c70

INSPIRE
SDS

Identification

File identifier: 936e04d0-c8ae-47ec-a858-518a77667c70 XML

Hierarchy level: dataset Dataset

Online resource

Resource identifier

code: https://catalogue.ceh.ac.uk/id/936e04d0-c8ae-47ec-a858-518a77667c70

Metadata language: EnglishEnglish

Spatial representation type: textTable Text, table

Encoding

Format: Comma-separated values (CSV)

Projection

code: OSGB 1936 / British National Grid

Classification of data and services

Topic category

Oceans

Classification of data and services

Coupled resource

Classification of data and services

Coupled resource

Keywords

GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0

Habitats and Biotopes

Geographic coverage

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin: 2012-10-01

End: 2013-09-01

Temporal extent

Date (Publication): 2016-02-29

Date (Creation): 2013-09-01

Quality and validity

Lineage: The method followed that of Möller (2006). Side-on photography was undertaken in the field using a frame to ensure consistent geometry and a calibrated Fuji Finepix XP30 camera. Photographs were rectified using Matlab and exported in TIFF format to Erdas Imagine for classification. A 20-class unsupervised classification was performed followed by manual attribution of classes into "background" and vegetation". The binary image files were then analysed in Matlab based on pixel sizes derived from the camera calibration procedure against a chequerboard background. Further methodological details are contained in the supporting document.

Conformity

Restrictions on access and use

Access constraints: no limitations

Access constraints: This resource is made available under the terms of the Open Government Licence

Access constraints: © University of Cambridge

Access constraints: If you reuse this data, you should cite: Evans, B.R., Möller, I., Spencer, T. (2016). Coastal Biodiversity and Ecosystem Service Sustainability (CBESS) projected area of vegetation in saltmarsh habitats. NERC Environmental Information Data Centre https://doi.org/10.5285/936e04d0-c8ae-47ec-a858-518a77667c70