Biology | European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODnet)

Europe’s seas and oceans are home to a staggering abundance and diversity of life, from large charismatic species such as seals, whales and dolphins, to the microscopic marine algae that form the base of the marine food chain. More than 36,000 known species of marine plants and animals are found in Europe, and understanding their geographic distribution, abundance and seasonal, annual or decadal variation is key to detecting changes in the marine ecosystem and for assessing ecosystem health of maritime basins. Unfortunately, measuring or observing marine life on a large scale is difficult. For the most part, data are collected over short time periods or in relation to specific species in target locations. Often data are collected by different organisations using different standards, technologies and conventions, making it challenging to combine information from different surveys or different databases.

Objectives

The EMODnet biology data portal provides free access to data on temporal and spatial distribution of marine species and species traits from all European regional seas. It is built upon the World Register of Marine Species and the European Ocean Biogeographic Information System. EMODnet Biology aims to provide a single access point to European marine biodiversity data and products by assembling individual datasets from various sources and processing them into interoperable data products for assessing the environmental state of ecosystems and sea basins.

Read more about the specific objectives of EMODnet Biology

The project will work in close collaboration with existing international networks on marine biological data collection and data management, such as the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO and its Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS), part of the International Oceanographic Information and Data Exchange (IODE) programme and with partner institutes from the SeaDataNet network, a European data infrastructure linking 45 European marine national data centres.

Data sources

EMODnet Biology provides access to data from a wide range of sources and actively pursues inclusion of new and historical data sets to the inventory based on careful assessment of the ease of use and fitness for purpose of the data and associated databases. The databases feeding into EMODnet Biology contain data from all regional and sub-regional seas of Europe, as specified by the Marine Strategy Framework Directive.

Read more about the main types of Data Contributors providing access to data to EMODnet Biology

International biogeographic datasets from the European Ocean Biogeographic data system (EurOBIS, VLIZ);
National monitoring programmes – typically these data providers have been collecting biological data, in some cases for several decades, and now make their datasets available through EMODnet;
International monitoring campaigns – databases storing data from multiples countries within the same regional European sea;
Data archaeology – datasets recovered from scientists’ personal files, excel spreadsheets, paper documents and other formats that would otherwise be lost or inaccessible.

EMODnet Biology data product development

A set of gridded map layers are available showing the average abundance of at least three species per species group for different time windows (seasonal, annual or multi-annual as appropriate) using geospatial modelling. In addition, spatially distributed data products specifically relevant for Marine Strategy Framework Directive Descriptor 2 (non-indigenous species) are available. Use is made of additional environmental information from other lots of EMODnet, e.g. on benthic habitat characteristics and water masses, to be used as co-factors in the gridding. The current Phase III of EMODnet's development will see a focus on the development of essential data products for key stakeholders.

Read more about the development of available EMODnet Biology data products

Implementation of a methodology, consistent with other EMODnet lots based on Data-Interpolating Variational Analysis (DIVA, ULg) to produce statistically optimized gridded map layers.
Production gridded map layers showing the average abundance of at least three species per species group in a given time window (seasonal, annual or multi-annual as appropriate, depending on the purpose of the analysis and the availability and time resolution of the data).
Estimation of the accuracy of the gridding procedure by comparison with validation data.
Complementation of the gridded map of averages with indications of the precision of the result based on the distribution of the basic data used to calculate the products.
Production of spatial maps (data products) specifically relevant for Marine Strategy Framework Directive Descriptor 2 (non-indigenous species).
Production of spatial maps of relevant quality indicators for Marine Strategy Framework Directive, if and when agreed-upon indicators are available and computable based on data available in the present project.

Improvements in the current development phase III (2017-2021)

Development of core data products from EMODnet Biology to support management, policy, planning and education, considering both at European and regional seas level, as well as for global/international purposes.
Availability of EMODnet Biology API: Occurrence data (species observations) as Web Feature Service (WFS), additional measurements, linked to the occurrence data as Web Feature Service (WFS) and retrieval of data of the gridded abundance data products as WFS/WMS. Use of the AphiaID to query by (biological) taxonomy and IMISDasID to query by metadata dataset. Examples of EMODnet Biology Data applications written in R are also available.
Data layers provided to support Marine Strategy Framework Directive