Coastal Bays Scallops

The Sensitive Areas Scallop dataset shows areas within Maryland's Coastal Bays that are significant for Scalloppopulations. The assumption is that an area's importance to Scallops is related to the density of SAV beds. The data set is based on 1999 Submerged Aquatic Vegetation (SAV) coverage dataset that was produced at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science from aerial photography flown in 1999. It is a portion of the full SAV dataset that extends back to 1971. Areas with a bed density of 1 and 2 (rank=5) were more important than those areas with a density of 3 (rank = 3).