Gridded abundance maps of diatoms and dinoflagellates from the North Atlantic and North Sea

Gridded abundance maps representing diatoms and dinoflagellates in the North Atlantic and North Sea between 1958 and 2012. Phytoplankton organisms are responsible for about 45% of annual global photosynthesis. They are as such vital for the functioning of marine food webs (considered in MSFD descriptor 4) and are the main drivers of the global biogeochemical cycles. This product was developed with DIVA (Data-Interpolating Variational Analysis) and the scale represents log-transformed abundance. Data was provided by SAHFOS (Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) data (phytoplankton) from the Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science (SAHFOS)).