WFD Coastal Water Bodies Cycle 1

This record is for Approval for Access product AfA088. WFD Coastal Water Bodies Cycle 1 is a polygon Shapefile dataset containing attributes that have been collated as defined for the implementation of the Water Framework Directive (WFD). The WFD defines coastal water bodies as ‘…a surface water on the landward side of a line, every point of which is at a distance of one nautical mile on the seaward side from the nearest point of the baseline from which the breadth of territorial waters is measured, extending where appropriate up to the outer limit of transitional waters’. The delineation between coastal and transitional (estuarine) waters was determined by the Environment Agency defined transitional water bodies (see also the Lineage Statement in the Data Quality Info paragraph below). Water bodies are also split and assigned to River Basin Districts. Water bodies are attributed with a unique identifier ‘EA_WB_ID' (equivalent to WB_ID in Cycle 2) so this dataset can be linked directly to other WFD data sources such as physical characteristics, risk, classification and proposed objectives as well as Cycle 2 datasets. This dataset was previously known as WFD Coastal Waterbodies This dataset covers the layer for Cycle 1 of the Water Framework Directive. The equivalent layer for Cycle 2 is covered under WFD Transitional and Coastal water bodies Cycle 2. Please note that the Environment Agency no longer provide data for water bodies in Wales - this should now available from Natural Resources Wales.