Ocean Biogeographical Information System

The Ocean Biogeographical Information System is a catalog of global marine species inventory. The data is reported through interactive mapping software from which you can extract summary and point data. 

Dataset Location: OBIS; OBIS-Spatial Ecological Analysis of Megavertebrate Populations

Site Location: Global
 
Site(s) Georeferenced: Yes

Timespan: 1800s - Present; large focus for 2000-2010 Census of Marine Life

Data collected: OBIS presents data from a number of layers, including layers with species enenvironmental information and others for map visualization. A complete list of layers can be found at - http://www.iobis.org/geoserver/web/.

Data layers include:

drs_with_woa - species observations are linked with the World Ocean Atlas 2005 environmental data; species name, individual count, date, location, temperature, depth, salinity, nitrogen, oxygen, silicate.

points_ex - species observations include expanded collection info acquired from the original provider record

grid_sp -  gridded species distributions

summaries - gridded biodiversity (Simpson, Shannon, ES50), number of observations, number of taxa per c-square cell

Known Issues: The OBIS and OBIS-SEAMAP systems provide some barriers to automated or expansive use of the data.

There are a number of steps to access data in the OBIS GUI, including: identifying taxa and/or specific datasets within the catalog, navigating to the show results panel, and specifying download options. The OBIS-SEAMAP requires you to contact the data contributor for acces to their data.

Searching OBIS Mapper: OBIS Video Tutrial - http://www.iobis.org/mapper/contents/tutorials/basic_search_demo.htm

Using url direct querries is possible through http://www.iobis.org/geoserver/web/.

Conditions for use: Obis - open access; OBIS-SEAMAP - requests author contact

Citation/ Distributing Author:

OBIS- OBIS (YEAR). Global biodiversity indices from the Ocean Biogeographic Information System. Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO. Web. http://www.iobis.org

SEAMAP- Halpin, P.N., A.J. Read, E. Fujioka, B.D. Best, B. Donnelly, L.J. Hazen, C. Kot, K. Urian, E. LaBrecque, A. Dimatteo, J. Cleary, C. Good, L.B. Crowder, and K.D. Hyrenbach. 2009. OBIS-SEAMAP: The world data center for marine mammal, sea bird, and sea turtle distributions. Oceanography 22(2):104-115

Supplemental resources: Publications from OBIS users: Google Scholar

Available via the EcoData Retriever: No