| Classifying marine habitats is a growing research field and is of increasing interest to spatial planners and managers. Most studies have predominantly focused on the seabed to determine benthic habitat types, and only limited attention has been paid to the water column. Classification projects aim at identifying candidate management units for the application of various regional or national regulations such as the European Water Framework Directive. Here, we propose a seasonal classification of the water column in the eastern English Channel, which we validated with biological data. For the three tested compartments, phytoplankton, zooplankton and pelagic fishes, the validation results were satisfactory, with recall values (i.e. percentage of observations... |
