2003 Strategic Environmental Assessment SEA4 Technical report - Plankton (north UKCS)

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British Geological Survey (BGS)
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15 March 2024
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Summary

This report is a contribution to the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA4) conducted by the Department of Trade and Industry. The plankton community in the SEA4 area is similar to that in the North Sea, with variations in the abundances of some individual species. Emphasis in this review is put on trends in the abundances of major phytoplankton and zooplankton taxa over the last 40 years. The study is based on a unique long-term dataset of plankton abundance in the North Atlantic and the North Sea acquired by the Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR). In the phytoplankton community, conspicuous trends are the steady increase in Phytoplankton Colour (an indicator of phytoplankton biomass) since 1960 and the mid 1980s peak in Thalassiosira spp. abundance. Among the zooplankton the decline in the abundance of Calanus finmarchicus and the increase in that of Calanus helgolandicus since 1960 are probably related to increasing sea surface temperatures in the northeast Atlantic. Phytoplankton blooms are discussed, from the normal annual blooms to harmful algal blooms (HABs). Because of the extensive fish farm industry in coastal regions of SEA4, there is considerable interest and ongoing research into HABs, but there is no clear evidence that they are increasing in frequency or intensity due to anthropogenic eutrophication. Other important components of the plankton meroplankton, picoplankton and megaplankton are also reviewed.

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Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) data portal HTML 15 March 2024 Not available

Additional information

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Added to data.gov.uk
2011-08-30
Access contraints
Not specified
Harvest GUID
aba64100-c125-4de3-e044-0003ba6f30bd
Extent
Latitude: 64° to 58.7°
Longitude: -7° to 2°
Spatial reference system
urn:ogc:def:crs:EPSG::4326
Dataset reference date
2003-01-01 (publication)
Frequency of update
notPlanned
Responsible party
British Geological Survey (BGS) (custodian); Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) (originator)
ISO 19139 resource type
dataset
Metadata language
eng
Source Metadata
XML
HTML

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Licence information

The SEAs data were produced as part of the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change's Offshore Energy Strategic Environmental Assessment programme; Crown Copyright, all rights reserved. The DECC SEA must be acknowledged in any maps or publications that make use of the data. All the data files are freely available to the public. The Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) data portal provides free access to available data and reports which have been produced through the SEA process. The site is run and managed by BGS on behalf of the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). Many files can be downloaded directly from this website. Those that are too large to download can be ordered via the website for postal delivery from BGS. BGS (NERC) has been contracted by DECC to publish SEA datasets on its behalf. All intellectual property rights (including , without limitation, copyrights, database rights and all other rights which subsist or may at any time in the future subsist in the Dataset(s)) in the Dataset(s) ('Intellectual Property Rights') are owned by DECC (formerly the Department of Trade and Industry, and the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform). BGS has been authorised by DECC to use SEA datasets for all purposes but on a 'not-for-profit basis'. BGS has been authorised by DECC to pass on SEA datasets to third parties so that they can use them for all purposes but on a 'not-for-profit' basis.