During Phase 3, EMODnet Seabed habitats began collecting and providing habitat point data and meta-data. The consortium initially focused its efforts on designing a data scheme that would record all the necessary information and would be compatible with existing infrastructure for point data of species (Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS) and EMODnet Biology). This is vital given that a point-by-point observation of a habitat is likely to be coupled with observations of species from the same record. This project aims to include observations on the presence of habitat (where it exists) whenever data holders upload new observations of the presence of species to EurOBIS. This requires broad and sustained communication about the standards we have already developed and providing incentives for data owners to include this additional information in their documents.
