Scope of the MESH Project
The MESH Project began in 2004 and is made up of a consortium
of twelve partners from five European countries led by the UK’s
Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC), with financial support
from the EC’s INTERREG IIIB NWE Programme. The MESH
partnership draws together scientific and technical habitat-mapping
skills, expertise in data collation and its management, and proven
practical experience in the use of seabed-habitat maps for
environmental management within national regulatory
frameworks.
Increased pressure on the marine environment from human
activities was creating a demand for more information about the
nature of the seabed and its associated biodiversity to help our
management of these activities. Trying to implement existing
legislation such as the EC Habitat Directive and the EC Water
Framework Directive, and inform new policy initiatives such as the
EC Marine Thematic Strategy was also creating a demand for spatial
information in the marine environment. These demands provided
the context for a group of organisations to get together and design
the MESH Project..
Over the last four years MESH has created a structure to
collate and improve habitat maps at a national level, contributing
in turn to the compilation and aggregation of data at international
level. MESH project outputs intend to contribute to the
development of emerging marine planning mechanisms, by providing
accurate, repeatable and standardised methodologies for data
collection and interpretation. MESH focuses on establishing
standards to produce a framework for quality seabed mapping into
the future. Many of the tools and guides can be used to facilitate
data sharing and therefore add value to marine survey data you
already possess. The products and tools available through this
website, cover a wide range of mapping issues and hopefully are
useful to anyone engaged in coastal and offshore survey work with
the aim of producing seabed habitat maps.
This section of the website gives a full overview of the MESH
project from the background that addresses the policy and
management drivers, through how the work programmes
were organised and how outputs for each action were
successfully delivered.