Since its inception, in 2009, EMODnet Seabed Habitats has brought together a European consortium of specialists in benthic ecology and seabed habitat mapping to develop a transnational broad-scale seabed habitat map, named EUSeaMap. EUSeaMap is the only pan-European cartographic product that provides a standardised trans-boundary overview of the spatial distribution of seabed habitats across Europe. As such, it has been extensively used in various applications such as Marine Protected Area evaluation or cumulative impact of stressors on habitats, and it is likely to be used again in the future in various marine ecosystem assessments. It is therefore important to continue to update it regularly when significant improvements to the data products that constitute its basis, i.e. the seabed substrate, bathymetry or environmental variables, are published.
In addition to EUSeaMap, it would be desirable to provide stakeholders with products on the spatial distribution of targeted habitats/biotopes such as those of conservation interest (e.g. kelp forest, seagrass meadows, coral reefs). Some techniques, hereafter referred to as "SDMs", are acknowledged to be effective in mapping these habitats.
We argue that a program that would use these techniques to map these key habitats/biotopes in European waters would be invaluable, but such a program can only be achieved if there is a significant improvement in the spatial resolution of environmental variables. An important message of this report is therefore that the EU should consider funding a project that would develop spatially explicit high-resolution (at least 500 m) data products on key variables (light availability, hydrodynamics, wave exposure, temperature, oxygenation, chlorophyll-a, phosphate, nitrate, etc.) that would spatially cover all European waters.