An ecotope map of the trilateral Wadden Sea
Description
These data present the first digital, publicly available, ecotope map of the trilateral Wadden Sea covering the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark. This ecotope map, representative for the time period 2008-2012, was developed on the basis of bathymetry, salinity, flow velocity, exposure time, sediment composition, hard substrates and salt marshes. Ecotopes are discrete classes of the physical environment based on the distributions of communities in an ecosystem. An ecotope map can give a first–order estimate of the potential spatial distribution of species and communities. The use of a single, consistent and well-defined ecotope system makes it possible to compare the proportions of the different ecotopes and compare properties of the tidal basins over the entire trilateral Wadden Sea. This ecotope map of the trilateral Wadden Sea area followed the ecotope system for coastal waters ZES.1 typology that was developed in the Netherlands. This ecotope system is based on the notion that local physical environmental factors and processes are main determinants of communities. The main physical environmental factors and processes in the ZES.1 system were mean and variability of salinity, substratum type, mean water depth, and hydrodynamics. Class boundaries were used to classify the continuous variables in order to define the ecotopes. The ZES.1 ecotype system hierarchically arranges the ecotope variables on the basis of the dominance of the physical environmental factors and processes in determining community composition. CORRIGENDUM. In version 1 of June 2019 an error has been made. The class boundary between shallow sublittoral and low intertidal was not set to 4% mean exposure but to 0.001%. This resulted in a too low cover of sublitoral areas. In Version 2 this is corrected. The data file is a zipped file "EctpWZ3L_gpkg.zip" containing a GeoPackage, holding the geographical data (polygons etc.): i. EcotopeWS3_mp = polygon geodata of ecotope map ii. bivbeds_focc = geodata for eco-element bivalve beds (polygon) iii. eelgrass_presence = geodata for eco-element seagrass aka eelgrass presence (polygon) iv. EcotopeWS3CodeInterpretation, table explaining how fields in ecotope map should be interpreted v. ZESsmpleCode2Legend, table expanding ZESsimple from code to full legend text. and includes: 2) a set of QML-files (symbology definition files for QGIS), 3) a set of SLD-files (symbology layer definition files for GeoServer), 4) three PNG-files to provide the different textures/patterns used in the symbolising the sediment types.