EUSeaMap 2025 Broad-Scale Predictive Habitat Map - Arctic Mask (Habitat Descriptor)

Arctic mask shapefile produced by EMODnet Seabed Habitats as an input layer for the 2025, 2023 and 2021 EUSeaMap broad-scale habitat model. Used in as a proxy to delimit the Arctic zone and it is used to classify shallow habitats into Arctic habitat classes as required by the EUNIS (V. 2019) habitat classification. The layer was created for the 2021 EUSeaMap and was used unchanged in the other versions.

The masks covers areas in the Barents Sea which are North of the polar front or where ice concentration exceeded 20% on average in 2018. The 20% threshold was derived from WMO ice classification and corresponds to "Very open drift ice".

Created by the EMODnet Seabed Habitats project consortium - Not yet available for download or access.

A report on the methods used in the 2025 version of EUSeaMap will be published in due course and reports on previous versions where this layer was used (v2021 and v2023) are linked in lineage.

Credit: Licensed under CC-BY 4.0 from the European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODnet) Seabed Habitats initiative (https://emodnet.ec.europa.eu/en/seabed-habitats), funded by the European Commission.