Sea Regions

-- Name -- Shoreline -- Definition -- Any Boundary between a Sea Area and land. -- Description --

-- Name -- Sea Area -- Definition -- An area of sea defined according to its physical and chemical characteristics. It may have multiple geometries (extent) to represent different tidal states. -- Description -- A SeaArea is a type of HydroObject as described in the Annex1 theme Hydrography. It has geometry described by one or more GM_MultiSurfaces. Multiple geometries are allowed to enable a SeaArea to be described according to different tidal states. Typically however, specialisations of SeaArea will restrict the geometry to a particular tidal state or set of tidal states. SeaAreas include named seas such as ‘Baltic Sea’ and also un-named areas of sea that have particular chemical and physical characteristics. SeaAreas are 2D objects and carry no explicit information about the depth of the sea, this is specified in the INSPIRE Elevation Theme.

-- Name -- Intertidal Area -- Definition -- The part of the marine environment that is exposed (not covered in water) during a normal tidal cycle; defined as the difference between any high and any low water level. -- Description -- The part of the marine environment that is exposed (not covered in water) during a normal tidal cycle.

-- Name -- Shore Segment -- Definition -- A Shore Segment is a section of shore line. -- Description -- Where it is possible to provide attributes about shore stability (eroding, stable etc) and/or shore type (sand, rock, harbour etc). Then the Shore Segment should be used in place of the GML LineString element to describe curve segments.

-- Name -- Sea -- Definition -- Extent of sea at High Water (meanHighWater). -- Description -- An area of sea, bounded by land and adjacent sea regions. May contain smaller scale sea regions. Has common large scale circulation patterns, in part defined by its land boundaries. High Water is taken to be mean high water. Applies to common names areas of sea, e.g. North Sea, Agean Sea etc. (Source: IHO S23 SeaRegion)

-- Name -- Marine Circulation Zone -- Definition -- A sea area defined by its physical and chemical circulation patterns. -- Description -- Typically used for management and reporting of the marine environment or marine environmental classification.

-- Name -- Marine Layer -- Definition -- A Marine Layer describes any layer that may cover any part of a sea surface or sea bottom. -- Description -- Examples of surface layers identified in the reference material include oil, algal blooms and ice. Examples of seabed layer identified in the reference material include sediment type and presence or absence of vegetation. As these phenomena have a dynamic characteristic, the extent they describe (GM_Surface) has a validity period. A marineLayer may not be associated with a particular SeaArea. A SeaArea may have multiple MarineLayers and MarineLayers can overlap each other.

-- Name -- Coastline -- Definition -- A special case of a shoreline defined as the shoreline at Mean High Water (MHW). Where there is not significant variation in water level, Mean Sea Level (MSL) can be used as a substitute for MHW. -- Description -- This feature type is designed for the general use case where the land:sea boundary is required to support general discovery and viewing of datasets. It is not designed to infer any political boundaries. The purpose is to provide a consistent overview of European marine extent and for this reason a single tidal extent is selected. This is consistent with IHO-57 definitions

-- Name -- Marine Contour -- Definition -- A set of isolines representing the value of some phenomenon at a particular time. -- Description -- A representation of any physical or chemical phenomenon related to the SeaArea. MarineContour should be derived from an OceanGeographicFeature of the same phenomenon. The source observations used to derive this feature may be linked to via the sourceObservations association. MarineContour is an abstraction of the ‘real world’ to provide an overview of the expected conditions of a SeaArea. Examples would include salinity contours, depth contours, significant wave height.

-- Name -- Sea Bed Area -- Definition -- An area of the sea bed with some identified type of cover. e.g. an area of vegetation or sediment type. -- Description -- This describes a sea region according to the characteristics of the sea bed rather than characteristics of the water column in general. It does not include the subsea geology and is analogous to the concept of LandCover (INSPIRE Annex III).

-- Name -- Sea Surface Area -- Definition -- An area of the sea surface with some type of cover e.g. an area of sea ice. -- Description -- This describes a sea region according to the characteristics of the sea surface rather than characteristics of the water column in general. It is analogous to the concept of LandCover (INSPIRE Annex III).

-- Name -- Marine Extent -- Definition -- The extent of a sea area for a given tidal state -- Description -- The expected 2D geometric extent of a SeaArea for a particular tidal state.

-- Name -- Parameter Value Pair -- Definition -- A parameter value pair contains a value of some observed property. e.g. Annual Mean Sea Surface Temperature.

-- Name -- Marine Isoline -- Definition -- An isoline representing a particular value of some marine physical or chemical phenomenon such as temperature, salinity or wave height. -- Description -- A Marine Contour representing a particular value of some phenomenon. The geometry of the contour is a GM_Multicurve, i.e. may be formulated from several curves, all representing the same value e.g. 15 degrees celsius.

-- Name -- Sea Area Type Classifcation Value -- Definition -- Classification type of the SeaArea, e.g. estuary, openOcean

-- Name -- Shore Stability Value -- Definition -- Types of the stability of shore segments. -- Description -- The allowed values for this code list comprise any values defined by data providers.

-- Name -- Zone Type Value Codelist -- Definition -- Types of marine circulation zones -- Description -- The allowed values for this code list comprise any values defined by data providers.

-- Name -- Sea Bed Cover Value -- Definition -- Types of cover found on sea beds. -- Description -- The allowed values for this code list comprise any values defined by data providers. -- Governance -- May be extended by member states

-- Name -- Sea Surface Classification Value -- Definition -- Types of sea surface layers found on sea surfaces. -- Description -- Codelist for types of sea surface layers found on sea surfaces (.e.g oil, ice etc).

-- Name -- Shore Type Classification Value -- Definition -- Types of shore segments. -- Description -- The allowed values for this code list comprise any values defined by data providers.