A new international data collation exercise has brought together disparate seabed biodiversity data from across the North Sea into a central data set, helping to drive forward the sustainable expansion of offshore wind and to identify how biodiversity net gain can be delivered in tandem.

The North Sea Net Gain study, led by The Crown Estate in partnership with the Dutch-led Rich North Sea programme, aims to ensure that decisions on the next generation of offshore wind farms will be based on the most comprehensive information and will bring biodiversity net gain.

The project is funded by The Crown Estate’s £25 million investment into its Offshore Wind Evidence and Change Programme (OWEC), and by The Rich North Sea programme. It is delivered through international collaboration between the UK government’s Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas) and Flemish marine research organisation The Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ), and supported by a project advisory group which included members from Natural England and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee.

The study itself responds to an urgent need to improve understanding of the biodiversity of the seabed on a larger scale. Through the adoption of a big data approach, development of big data infrastructure, and expansion of an existing dataset, the findings of the study have significantly enhanced understanding of the seabed. Such approaches are likely to play a significant role in the sustainable development of offshore wind in the North Sea. The findings of this work provide important context for decision makers.

Data collected by industry, government and academic sources across seven countries have been brought together into a central data set containing almost 50,000 seabed samples with over 1.4 million records, and state-of-the-art modelling techniques used to map benthic (seafloor) biodiversity across international boundaries. As part of this, two new online apps have been produced under the name ‘OneBenthic’. The OneBenthic Data Extraction Tool provides developers, regulators and decision makers with access to the enhanced big data collected by the study. In addition, the OneBenthic Layers Tool provides access to benthic biodiversity models developed under this and other research projects, at speed.

Further information can be found here and the North Sea Net Gain report can be read here.