Project
Fronts for Marine Wildlife Assessment for Renewable Developments (FRONTWARD)
Fronts for Marine Wildlife Assessment for Renewable Developments (FRONTWARD) aims to enhance our understanding of the relationship between ocean fronts and biodiversity hotspots, and to evaluate how these data can be applied in the future planning of marine sectors, such as offshore renewables.
The project leverages Earth Observation datasets to characterize ocean fronts and other physical features. Biodiversity hotspots will be identified using a biodiversity index, created using a compilation of an unprecedented collation of UK at-sea observations spanning several decades (1980s-2020s). survey and tagging datasets from recent projects.
Three world-leading institutions are coordinating this project, funded by The Crown Estate: Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML) will undertake the Earth Observation and ocean front aspects. The Ecology Group at the University of Aberdeen (UoA) and The School of Ocean Sciences at Bangor University (BU) will lead the biodiversity and spatial statistics aspects.
This project will produce open-access data layers and supporting metadata files of the fronts and biodiversity index: these will be available on the Marine Data Exchange by March 2025.
Webinar: “Linking Ocean Fronts and Biodiversity for Evidenced Marine Spatial Planning” presented the outcomes and outputs of the project. A total of 122 national and international participants attended, representing NGOs, industry, government departments and the research community.
Here are the PML shelf sea fronts produced by FRONTWARD on The Crown Estate Marine Data Exchange: 2010-2023, Plymouth Marine Laboratory, FRONTWARD, Shelf-sea fronts: UK satellite climatology of thermal and colour fronts | Marine Data Exchange
