Water Framework Directive Marine Plants Task Team Tools Paper ...

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Therefore a separate scoring system was devised to incorporate such variables and allow for the inclusion of other factors known to be present in isolated areas around the British Isles. This system acts as a type of ‘correction factor’ whereby shores that have high species richness due to favourable environmental conditions can be equally compared with shores of low species richness due to unfavourable natural conditions. The requirement to encompass the natural variations occurring over the coastline of the British Isles has led to the development of a field sampling sheet (Table 1) and a corresponding scoring system which contributes to the overall metric for quality classification. The numbers in the sampling sheet attached to each of the shore types/habitat types are based on how much they contribute to the overall species richness, for example rock ridges/platforms/outcrops has a high value of 4 where as shingle/gravel only scores 0 because this substrate type doesn’t lend itself to high numbers of algal species. The sampling sheet also leaves space for brief shore descriptions as well as basic details on the site name, times of sampling etc. The dominant biota information does not contribute to the overall scoring system but may be useful in subsequent years to explain any ecological change and may help to identify shifts in the benthic invertebrate community. The scores from each of the categories in the field sampling sheet are added together, this value is then applied to the species richness score as a correction factor. For those factors, such as shore type and habitat type, where more than one description may be recorded on the sampling sheet, only the highest score is used in the final scoring system.
Table 1: Field sampling sheet to record basic shore descriptions. General Site Information Shore Name Date <strong>Water</strong> Body Tidal Height Grid Ref. Time of Low Tide Shore Descriptions Presence of Turbidity (known to be non anthropogenic) Dominant Shore Type Subhabitats Rock Ridges/Outcrops/Platforms =4 Irregular Rock =3 Yes =0 Sand Scour Yes =0 No =2 No =2 Chalk Shore Yes =0 No =2 Wide Shallow Rock Pools (>3m wide and 6m long) =4 Steep/Vertical Rock =2 Deep Rockpools (50% >100cm deep) =4 Nonspecific hard substrate =2 Basic Rockpools =3 Pebbles/Stones/SmallRocks =1 Large Crevices =3 Shingle/Gravel = 0 Large Overhangs and Vertical Rock =2 Dominant Biota Ascophyllum Fucoid =4 Others habitats (please specify) =2 Rhodophyta mosaics Caves =1 Chlorophyta None =0 Mussels Total Number of Subhabitats Barnacles >4 3 2 1 0 Limpets Periwinkles General Comments The numbers in each of the boxes refer to the score to which each characteristic would equate based on its contribution to the level of species richness.
Page 1 and 2: Water Framework Directive Marine Pl
Page 3 and 4: dates will result in a larger speci
Page 5 and 6: Figure 2: Sites included within the
Page 7: fauna and flora and exposed shores
Page 11 and 12: These different community factors c
Page 13 and 14: All datasets were tested for normal
Page 15 and 16: Table 3: Calculation of ‘deshor
Page 17 and 18: Development of a Reduced Species Li
Page 19 and 20: certain species are only present on
Page 21 and 22: Figure 11: Map of the UK and Republ
Page 23 and 24: Table 4: Species lists for each of
Page 25 and 26: Table 6: Boundaries values for RSL,
Page 27 and 28: The final metric system works on a
Page 29 and 30: Table 10: Final quality status and
Page 31 and 32: EQR Value EQR Value 1.00 0.80 0.60
Page 33 and 34: EQR Value 1.00 0.80 0.60 0.40 0.20

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