Identification

Title

Habitat point records from 1990 MNCR Mull of Galloway/Auchencairn sublittoral survey

Abstract

The Solway Firth straddles the western border between Scotland and England, the southern shores lying in Cumbria, the northern shores in Dumfries and Galloway. The Solway is an area of transition from the characteristically sedimentary coastline and seabed of Cumbria and the north-eastern Irish Sea in the south to the more rocky fiordic coastline of western Scotland. The seabed consists largely of sediments, mostly mobile, with areas of shallow bedrock and boulders adjacent to the coast. The inshore sublittoral zone of the area is generally unspoilt, with few damaging activities. The backing coastland is also mostly unspoilt and semi-natural, predominantly used as pasture grassland for dairy farming. Twenty-six sublittoral sites were surveyed on the open coast covering both rocky and sedimentary substrata. From these sites, 19 habitat types were identified. The survey area was split into two distinct regions by Burrow Head. To the west, where continuous hard substrata occurred, communities were characteristic of open coast areas, with a zonation from upper infralittoral to lower circalittoral. However, turbidity increased from west to east with consequent decreases in algal penetration and, in the east of the survey area, algae extended little deeper than chart datum level. Animal dominated communities were therefore predominant on hard substratum in this eastern region. Habitat diversity was generally low, most sedimentary areas being either mobile medium grained sands, or more stable fine grained sands with a low silt content. Bedrock was mostly upward facing and heavily silted, dominated by erect bryozoans, except around the Mull of Galloway and the Scares, where a greater diversity was encountered. Records currently considered sensitive have been removed from this dataset.

Resource type

dataset

Resource locator

http://data.jncc.gov.uk/data/74ddb086-f997-4db7-afe7-d10320b2fa0d-1990-MNCR-Mull-of-Galloway-Auchencairn-sublittoral-survey.csv

name: 1990-MNCR-Mull-of-Galloway-Auchencairn-sublittoral-survey.csv

Unique resource identifier

code

74ddb086-f997-4db7-afe7-d10320b2fa0d

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Additional information source

Covey (1992) Sublittoral survey of the north coast of the outer Solway (Mull of Galloway to Auchencairn).

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

oceans

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Marine

Marine Recorder

JNCCMNCR10000041

Habitat

MNCR

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

-4.918427559

East bounding longitude

-3.801973458

North bounding latitude

54.84941826

South bounding latitude

54.58316804

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

1990-07-17

End position

1990-07-24

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2007-05-22

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

This survey was extracted from a Marine Recorder snapshot.

Conformity

Data format

name of format

Comma Separated Values

version of format

Unknown

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Open Government Licence v3.0

Limitations on public access

no limitations

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

organisation name

Digital and Data Solutions, JNCC

email address

data@jncc.gov.uk

responsible party role

custodian

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact

organisation name

Digital and Data Solutions, JNCC

email address

data@jncc.gov.uk

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata date

2018-05-17

Metadata language