Submerged Aquatic Vegetation (SAV) in the Balearic Islands

Dataset description Annual map of submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) along the coast of the Balearic Islands. SAV presence/absence is derived from temporal aggregates of one year (2019) of Sentinel-2 imagery and EMODnet bathymetry using machine learning methods. Limitations Data availability depends on the number of usable observations with respect to clouds or water turbidity and may therefore vary spatially and temporally. Product quality depends on proper flagging by IdePix classification. The algorithm does not differentiate between different types of submerged aquatic vegetation (e.g., macroalgae or seagrass) and does not consider vegetation health or phenology. Quality of model results is negatively affected by terrain shadows. This is most evident in tile T31TDE, which covers the northwest coast of Mallorca, where the Sierra de Tramuntana mountain range drops steeply into the Mediterranean Sea. Further, product quality is heavily influenced by bathymetric data quality. This is most noticeable in tile T31TDE, where a comparison with an independent bathymetric dataset suggests that EMODnet overestimates potential Posidonia habitat area. Occasionally spatial artifacts from computation of secondary products from bathymetry may be visible. Labels from the Posidonia atlas did not contain information about the timing of data collection.