ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Mar. Sci.
Sec. Marine Ecosystem Ecology
CoDeMap: a classification scheme for benthic habitats from the coast to the deep sea in the Mediterranean and Black Sea
Provisionally accepted
Valentina Grande1
Lorenzo Angeletti2,3
Mariacristina Prampolini1,3*
Giorgio Castellan1,3
Giacomo Dalla Valle1
Simonetta Fraschetti3,4,5
Daniela Basso6
Dimitar Berov7
Valentina Alice Bracchi6
Frine Cardone8
GIOVANNI CHIMIENTI9
Annalisa Falace10
Bella Galil11
Francesco Mastrototaro5,9
Maria Salomidi12
Alessandra Savini6
Patrick Joseph Schembri13
Valentina Ruseva Todorova14Marco Taviani1,8
Federica Foglini1- 1Istituto di Scienze Marine Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche Sede di Bologna, Bologna, Italy
- 2Istituto per le Risorse Biologiche e le Biotecnologie Marine Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche Sede Ancona, Ancona, Italy
- 3National Biodiversity Future Center, Palermo, Italy
- 4Universita degli Studi di Napoli Federico II Dipartimento di Biologia, Naples, Italy
- 5Consorzio Nazionale Interuniversitario per le Scienze del Mare, Roma, Italy
- 6Universita degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca Dipartimento di Scienze dell'Ambiente e della Terra, Milan, Italy
- 7Institut po bioraznoobrazie i ekosistemni izsledvania B'lgarska akademia na naukite, Sofia, Bulgaria
- 8Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn Napoli, Naples, Italy
- 9Universita degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro Dipartimento di Biologia, Bari, Italy
- 10Universita degli Studi di Trieste Dipartimento di Scienze della Vita, Trieste, Italy
- 11Tel Aviv University The Steinhardt Museum of Natural History, Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel
- 12Elleniko Kentro Thalassion Ereunon, Anavyssos, Greece
- 13University of Malta Faculty of Science, Msida, Malta
- 14Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Oceanology, Varna, Bulgaria
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The spatial representation of benthic habitats is essential across various applications, including marine ecosystem management and conservation, maritime spatial planning, policy and legislative support, biodiversity monitoring, assessment of ecosystem services, and modeling scenarios. In this context, it is crucial to provide a universally understandable framework using classification schemes to characterize and chart the seafloor. This work introduces the Coast to Deep Mapping (CoDeMap) classification scheme for benthic habitats from the coast to the deep-sea environments. It is a practical tool for users from various backgrounds who need to organize and interpret marine observational data, as well as characterize and map seafloors. While primarily developed for the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea, CoDeMap serves as a foundational framework that can be adapted to address any current or future similar request worldwide.
Keywords: Benthic habitat mapping, morphology, substrate, Biology, Hierarchical classification scheme, GIS, Mediterranean Sea, Black Sea
Received: 10 Jul 2025; Accepted: 29 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Grande, Angeletti, Prampolini, Castellan, Dalla Valle, Fraschetti, Basso, Berov, Bracchi, Cardone, CHIMIENTI, Falace, Galil, Mastrototaro, Salomidi, Savini, Schembri, Todorova, Taviani and Foglini. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Mariacristina Prampolini, mariacristina.prampolini@cnr.it
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