Distribution of unequivocal Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems (VMEs) and VME likelihood based on indicator taxa records, on the North Atlantic (18°N to 76°N and 36°E to 98°W). Several datasets, originating from public databases, literature review and data call to ATLAS partners, were gathered to compute the presence of unequivocal VME habitats in 25km * 25 km cells for the ATLAS work package 3. One layer displays the unequivocal VMEs (value=4) and the assigned high (value=3), medium (value=2) or low (value=1) likelihood of gridsquares to host VMEs, indexed on indicator taxa records from public databases with the method detailed in Morato et al (2018). The second displays the confidence associated to the VME likelihood score, indexed on data quality as detailed in Morato et al (2018) (values for unequivocal VMEs thus 100% confidence=4; high confidence=3; medium confidence=2; low confidence=1). This dataset was built to feed a basin-wide spatial conservation planning exercise, targeting the deep sea of the North Atlantic. The goal of this approach was to identify conservation priority areas for Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems (VMEs) and deep fish species, based on the distribution of species and habitats, human activities and current spatial management.

This dataset is the coastal zone land surface region from Europe, derived from the coastline towards inland, as a series of 10 consecutive buffers of 1km width each. The coastline is defined by the extent of the Corine Land Cover 2018 (raster 100m) version 20 accounting layer. In this version all Corine Land Cover pixels with a value of 523, corresponding to sea and oceans, were considered as non-land surface and thus were excluded from the buffer zone.

This raster dataset represents the probability of occurrence of whales in the Europe Seas, where the species included are: Blue whale, Sei whale, Humpback whale, Sperm whale, Fin whale and Northern right whale. The northern right whale model only describes the range of the western population of this species, since the eastern population is probably almost extinct. Thus, the northern right whale model only partly overlaps with the EEA area on interest. This dataset is based on AquaMaps distribution maps (version 10/2019). The dataset has been prepared in the context of the development of the first European Maritime Transport Environmental Report (EMSA-EEA report, 2021: https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/maritime-transport).

The raster dataset represents the risk of collision of whales with vessels in Europe Seas. The most vulnerable species from ship strikes are cetaceans and turtles, since they go to the surface to breathe. On the other hand, their migration routes can overlap with shipping lanes. The collisions can produce the death or injury of the animals, and are an important threat for the conservation of these species. The dataset has been prepared in the context of the development of the first European Maritime Transport Environmental Report (EMSA-EEA report, 2021: https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/maritime-transport).

Species distribution models (GAM, Maxent, and Random Forest ensemble) predicting the distribution of Sea pens and burrowing megafauna assemblages in the Northeast Atlantic. This community is considered ecologically coherent according to the cluster analysis conducted by Parry et al. (2015) on image samples. Modeling its distribution complements existing work on their definition and offers a representation of the extent of the areas of the North East Atlantic where they can occur based on the best available knowledge. This work was performed at the University of Plymouth in 2021.

The raster dataset represents fishing intensity (kilowatt per fishing hour) by pelagic towed gears in the European seas. The dataset has been derived from Automatic Identification System (AIS) based pelagic fishing intensity data received from the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre - Independent experts of the Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries (JRC STECF), as well as from Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) and logbook based pelagic fishing effort data from HELCOM Commission. The temporal extent varies between the data sources (between 2013 and 2015). The dataset has been transformed to a logarithmic scale (ln1). This dataset has been prepared for the calculation of the combined effect index, produced for the ETC/ICM Report 4/2019 "Multiple pressures and their combined effects in Europe's seas" available on: https://www.eionet.europa.eu/etcs/etc-icm/etc-icm-report-4-2019-multiple-pressures-and-their-combined-effects-in-europes-seas-1.

The dataset presents the potential combined effects of sea-based pressures on marine species and habitats estimated using the method for assessment of cumulative effects, for the entire suite of pressures and a selected set of marine species groups and habitats by an index (Halpern et al. 2008). The spatial assessment of combined effects of multiple pressures informs of the risks of human activities on the marine ecosystem health. The methodology builds on the spatial layers of pressures and ecosystem components and on an estimate of ecosystem sensitivity through an expert questionnaire. The raster dataset consists of a division of the Europe's seas in 10km and 100 km grid cells, which values represents the combined effects index values for pressures caused by sea-based human activities. The relative values indicate areas where the pressures potentially affect the marine ecosystem. This dataset underpins the findings and cartographic representations published in the report "Marine Messages" (EEA, 2020).

Coastal zones are presented as a series of 10 consecutive buffers of 1km width each (towards inland). For this dataset, were treated as sea data all areas with class values of 52x (521: coastal lagoons, 522: estuaries, 523: sea and ocean) in Corine Land Cover (details in lineage).