The Global Ecosystems Atlas: comprehensive and systematic mapping of Earth's ecosystems

Nicholas Murray, Falko Buschke, Benjamin Cresswell, Naema Gros-Dubois, David Keith, Thomas J. Lloyd, Carsten Meyer , Alys Young, Sean Askay, Tasso Azevedo, Madeeha Bajwa, Tanya Birch, Sean Breyer, Neil Burgess, Jillian Campbell, Robert Canto, Anisha Dayaram, Amanda Driver, Robert Filipp, Charlie Frye, Lela Gomersall, Tess Harmer, Alice C. Hughes , Walter Jetz, Marco Lambertini, Richard Lucas, Allison Lynn, William D. Masson, Rebecca Moore, Glenn Moncrrieff, Dhruv Narayan, Emily Nicholson, Mark Otterlee, Marc Paganini, Valerie J. Pasquarella, David Patterson, Joseph Redmon, Rebecca Saunders, Emily Schechter, Michelle Sims , Andrew Skowno, Bruno Smets, Benjamin S.C. Steer, Marcos Valderrabano, Sara Venturini, Yana Gevorgyan

Halting and reversing biodiversity loss is central to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, yet a lack of consistent, spatially comprehensive data on ecosystem distributions has undermined our ability to monitor progress against its goals and targets. Here we introduce the Global Ecosystems Atlas initiative, convened by the intergovernmental Group on Earth Observations (GEO) in collaboration with the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and developed through an international collaboration among intergovernmental organisations, non-government organisations, scientists, governments, and practitioners. The core elements of the Global Ecosystems Atlas (www.globalecosystemsatlas.org) are (i) an open-access geospatial dataset designed to represent the spatial distribution of 110 ecosystem functional groups, 25 biomes, and 10 realms as classified by the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology, (ii) a data catalogue of pre-existing geospatial datasets that were developed to represent ecosystems, and (iii) a spatial dataset of ecosystem occurrence records (EcoTrain) annotated by a team of trained interpreters to provide training and validation data across the initiative. In addition to these three core data products, the Global Ecosystems Atlas initiative includes guidelines, mapping and analysis tools, an online application and API, and online training resources to enable individuals, governments, corporates and other stakeholders to access ecosystems data, develop their own maps of ecosystem functional groups, and produce reports on the extent and distribution of ecosystems at a variety of spatial scales. Future phases of the Global Ecosystems Atlas initiative will focus on developing further essential data and resources required to advance our knowledge of the distribution, change dynamics and condition of all of the world’s ecosystems. We anticipate that the Global Ecosystems Atlas will emerge as a central resource for distributing knowledge about the distribution and change of all of the world’s ecosystems to support conservation and restoration efforts worldwide.