Enlighten the next generation
Open a world of possibilities for students by exposing them to this open, authoritative 3D data source.
Ecological Marine Units
GIS provides a better understanding of ocean ecosystems
Public-private partnership led by USGS & Esri
Ecological Marine Units are published in the journals Nature and Oceanography.
Exploring Ecological Marine Units
Redefining the notions of the ocean to teach, conduct research, and collaborate for marine science advancement.
A healthy ocean can reduce poverty, combat hunger, limit the impacts of climate change, and improve the global economy. To achieve these ideals and support ocean sustainability, it is necessary to have a baseline method for understanding of the ocean’s ecosystems and a framework to detect change. Ecological Marine Units (EMU) are baseline 3D mapped ecosystems of the ocean that have been classified through statistical clustering. They are published in the peer-reviewed journal Oceanography.
EMU greatly benefit the design of marine protected areas (MPAs). Their use is also valuable for scientific research and classroom instruction.
The problem
The ocean's health is fundamental to earth's survival, yet 95 percent of the ocean remains a mystery. With so little of the ocean explored in detail, authoritative data and the insights it yields are lacking, limiting the extent to which vital marine ecosystems can be managed properly. In a world of accelerating climate change and population pressures, a better understanding of the ocean is necessary to reduce the risk of critically damaging or exhausting marine resources.
The solution
The Group on Earth Observations (GEO), a consortium of over 100 nations and over 100 other organizations, commissioned a global map of EMU to promote sustainable use of ocean resources and environmental resilience. Rigorous statistical clustering produced 37 distinct 3D volumetric regions of ocean properties most likely to drive ecosystem responses. With this, conservation-minded organizations, academic institutions, or citizen scientists can gauge positive or negative trends and use data to make better-informed decisions that preserve marine environments.
How EMU work
EMU comes from a 3D point mesh framework of 52 million global measurements of six key ocean variables collected over 50 years at a horizontal resolution of 1/4˚ by 1/4˚ (~27 km x 27 km at the equator), over 102 depth zones. Multivariate statistical methods clustered the data into EMU, which were then verified by leading oceanographers. The result is a standardized, rigorous, and ecologically meaningful set of units that may be used as a basemap beneath an organization's GIS data to support climate change impact studies, conservation priority setting, economic and social valuation, and marine spatial planning.
Previous
Next