The World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA) is the most comprehensive global database of marine and terrestrial protected areas, updated on a monthly basis, and is one of the key global biodiversity data sets being widely used by scientists, businesses, governments, International secretariats and others to inform planning, policy decisions and management.
Bio-ORACLE is a set of GIS rasters providing geophysical, biotic and environmental data for surface and benthic marine realms. The data are available for global-scale applications at a spatial resolution of 5 arcmin (approximately 9.2 km at the equator).
Linking biodiversity occurrence data to the physical and biotic environment provides a framework to formulate hypotheses about the ecological processes governing spatial and temporal patterns in biodiversity, which can be useful for marine ecosystem management and conservation.
This dataset shows the global distribution of seamounts and knolls identified using global bathymetric data at 30 arc-sec resolution. A total of 33,452 seamounts and 138,412 knolls were identified, representing the largest global set of identified seamounts and knolls to date. Seamount habitat was found to constitute approximately 4.7% of the ocean floor, whilst knolls covered 16.3%.
The research leading to these results received funding from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme, and from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
GEBCO's aim is to provide the most authoritative publicly-available bathymetry of the world's oceans. It operates under the joint auspices of the International Hydrographic Organization(IHO) and the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) (of UNESCO).
GEBCO produces and makes available a range of bathymetric data sets and products. This includes a global bathymetric grid; gazetteer of undersea feature names, a Web Map Service and printable maps of ocean bathymetry.