The EUNIS habitat classification scheme was developed by the European Environment Agency (2001)9. It provides a hierarchical structure,
with progressive layers dealing
with different features of the habitat. Level 1 distinguishes the marine environment from terrestrial; and Levels 2, 3 and 4 separate sediments into biological zones in increasing detail. Biological zones are divided by depths which are governed by certain physical characteristics provided below (this list only includes those biological zones found within the area of interest):
Infralittoral: low tide to maximum depth of 1% light attenuation
Ciraclittoral: from maximum depth of Infralittoral zone to the maximum depth of wave impact (wavebase)
Deep Circalittoral: below wavebase and on the continental shelf Littoral: the intertidal zone
The Level 4 EUNIS model shown in Figure 23 was created using ten EUNIS categories which were assigned to different areas on the basis of the sediment map detailed in D.1.1 and the biological zones (governed by depth, light attenuation and wavebase) provided by UKSeaMap 2010 as detailed in Table 4 (see fifth column).
Figure 23 shows that the area of interest is dominated by circalittoral fine sand (i.e. fine sand below 1% light attenuation and above the wavebase) across the central and eastern section of the cable route, with deep circalittoral sand to the extreme east and infralittoral sand to the west, inshore. However, infralittoral groups of all sediment types were more common across the near- shore area.
Figure groups
24 shows the multivariate faunal identified in Section C.2.4 super-
imposed onto the EUNIS Level 4 habitat model presented in Figure 23. Figure 24 demonstrates that the majority of the faunal communities occurred on more than one habitat across the cable route area. This is likely to be a reflection of the fact that whilst there are a number of different habitats present across the area of interest, some are not radically different from one another. Hence, many of the faunal communities are capable of existing within a range of habitats that do occur.
