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National Parks and Wildlife Service - Inventory of Irish coastal lagoons 2007

Before the Habitats Directive, only four lagoons were at all well known in Ireland (Lady’s Island Lake, Tacumshin Lake, Lough Murree, Furnace Lough) and very few biological studies had been published. Under the obligations of the Directive, the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) of the Irish Government commissioned a series of surveys of coastal lagoons in Ireland in order to compile an inventory of lagoons in the country for selection of representative examples for designation as, or within, SACs.
Surveys were carried out in 1996 (Good 1996, Good and Butler 1998, Hatch 1996, Hatch and Healy 1998, Healy and Oliver 1998, Oliver and Healy 1998). These surveys were summarised by Healy et al. 1997a,b,c.
Further surveys were carried out in 1998 (Healy 1999a,b; Oliver 1999, Roden 1999, Good 1999, Good and Butler 2000). An inventory of approximately 100 lagoons was compiled as a result of these surveys and 36 of the higher conservation value lagoons were sampled over a 1-4 day period, depending on the size of the lagoon.
More lagoons were sampled from 2002-3 as part of a PhD study (Oliver 2005, Roden 2004).

The principal objectives of this project were to:

1. Select four different lagoon types and sample fauna and flora seasonally to gain some understanding of seasonal changes which may occur, in order to design appropriate monitoring procedures.
2. Sample an additional 24 lagoons to produce a total data set from 60 lagoons, which could be analysed statistically to produce a biological classification of Irish coastal lagoons.
3. Use the information collected from the 60 lagoons sampled, together with others visited briefly, to compare with information available concerning lagoons in other Member States in order to put the Irish lagoons into a European context.

National Parks and Wildlife Service

2015-06-23 13:00:19

Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht

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