Known mapped areas of seagrass (Zostera marina & Zostera noltii) meadows around the United Kingdom – 1998 to 2021

Since 1998, approximately 148,134,806 m2 (14,813.5 Ha) of seagrass habitat has been mapped across the United Kingdom coastline. This was calculated from a total of 1,872 polygons from 67 datasets of mapped seagrass meadows using various methodologies of surveying (diving, aerial photography, hydrographic surveys, walking surveys, drone mapping, in situ assessments) and various resolutions. This data was collated from a wide range of databases outlined in the paper by Green et al. (2021; doi:10.3389/fpls.2021.629962). The datasets were subsequently projected into QGIS, merged, and dissolved into one layer as one single shapefile. The resulting dataset is a composite shapefile depicting mapped seagrass distribution across the United Kingdom, saved as a QGIS polygon shapefile, using the Assigned Coordinate Reference System (CRS) EPSG:4326 – WGS 84.