The Spatial Assessment Units (SAUs) are areas within the ATLAS case studies. The designation of the SAUs was carried out as part of the ATLAS work facilitating the implementation of the European Commission's Marine Strategy Framework Directive/Good Environmental Status in deep waters of the North Atlantic. As part of this work, the usefulness of the software Nested Environmental status Assessment Tool (NEAT) was evaluated. NEAT requires the designation of SAUs as part of its assessments on environmental status (for more information please see ATLAS Deliverable 3.1. "Good Environmental Status and Biodiversity Assessments"). Whenever it was meaningful, SAUs were divided into smaller SAUs (e.g. the parental SAU in the Rockall Bank was divided into four smaller SAU_1, SAU_2, SAU_3 and SAU_4) based on data availability, presence/absence of human activities, bathymetry and topography.

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