Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS) A Census of Marine Life
Written by Glenn Letham (GISuser editor)
Sunday, 12 March 2006
OBIS is an international federation of organisations and people sharing a vision to make marine biogeographic data. Explore data on locations of marine animals and plants and obtain data tables, maps and predict distributions using environmental information - More than 9 million records are available from from 93 databases making up a comprehensive census of marine life.
More About OBIS
OBIS is a web-based provider of global geo-referenced information on marine species. We contain expert species level and habitat level databases and provide a variety of spatial query tools for visualizing relationships among species and their environment. OBIS strives to assess and integrate biological, physical, and chemical oceanographic data from multiple sources. Users of OBIS, including researchers, students, and environmental managers, will gain a dynamic view of the multi-dimensional oceanic world. You can explore this constantly expanding and developing facility through the OBIS Portal.
Searching by species is a breeze. Simply enter the scientific name and a tabular display of results is presented. Results include scientific name, common name, meta data, and a map if applicable. The resulting map can be viewed as a small or large version and its clickable - see sample map below.
Data are provided from nodes all over the World, for example, daqta on moluscs is now available from AfrOBIS. A section devoted to news about data is available at http://www.iobis.org/newdata. Much of the data available for viewing/search is obtained from the portal at http://seamap.env.duke.edu/datasets where data about more than 500 species makes up 164 datasets comprising 1,076,106 records, spanning years 1935 to 2005. When you visit http://seamap.env.duke.edu/ you'll notice that a Google mashup is used to provide a keymap where you can start a search for data. Click a familiar google bubble, then follow the results to bring up a more detailed display providing metadata and options to download the dataset as a CSV file of SHP file. An option to view a larger image of the dataset is available, as is a link to access the data in Google Earth - see sample below showing results of a search for Indian Ocean Marine Bird and Mammal Survey, 2004.
Results for Indian Ocean Marine Bird and Mammal Survey - notice options to download or view entire dataset
This welcome map provides a starting point for your search at OBIS - results are mapped using a small or large display
Map of results for search Salmo gairdnerii showing results for Canada
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OBIS is an international federation of organisations and people sharing a vision to make marine biogeographic data. Explore data on locations of marine animals and plants and obtain data tables, maps and predict distributions using environmental information - More than 9 million records are available from from 93 databases making up a comprehensive census of marine life.
