Environment databases

Most frequently used databases in biodiversity research

November 2024

Nicolas Casajus

Camille Coux

Data scientists
@FRB-CESAB    

Questions to ask

  • What is my research question?
  • What do I need?
  • Spatial extent and resolution
  • Temporal extent and resolution
  • What confidence do I have in the data?

Overview

Climate & weather

  • WorldClim
  • Chelsa
  • CMIP6

Land cover

  • Corine
  • Copernicus
  • WorldCover

Soil data

  • SoilTemp
  • HWSD


Ecoregions

  • WWF MEOW
  • WWF TEOW

Protected areas

  • WDPA

Country boundaries

  • Natural Earth
  • GADM


Socio-economics

  • FAO
  • UNDP

Elevation & Bathymetry

  • DEM
  • Bio-oracle

Satellite data

  • NDVI
  • LandSat
  • Modis

Climate & weather

WorldClim

Downloadable GeoTiff zipped files of Average minimum temperature (°C), average maximum temperature (°C) and total precipitation (mm), at resolutions from 30 seconds (~1 km2 at the equator) to 10 minutes (~340 km2).


Chelsa

Climatologies at high resolution for the earth’s land surface areas is a very high resolution (30 arc sec, ~1km) global downscaled climate data set

Technical specifications PDF : read it before you download anything !

Meta data or data paper…?

Land cover


Copernicus

Earth observation component of the European Union’s Space programme, looking at our planet and its environment to benefit all European citizens. It offers information services that draw from satellite Earth Observation and in-situ (non-space) data.

At the heart of Copernicus is a constellation of satellites – the Sentinels – that make a huge number of daily observations of the Earth ecosystem.

Each satellite has its specificities and you should read about them before anything else.

Download data through many different portals: Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) Portal, Copernicus Marine Monitoring Service (CMEMS) Portal, Copernicus Land Monitoring Service where Corine is just one of them…

Land cover

Corine Land Cover

CORINE Land Cover (CLC) is a pan-European land cover and land use inventory with 44 thematic classes, ranging from broad forested areas to individual vineyards

Updated every six years (most recent in 2018).


WorldCover

WorldCover provides the first global land cover products for 2020 and 2021 at 10m resolution, developed and validated in near-real time based on Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 data.

Data access protocol here.

Soil data

HWSD

Harmonized World Soil Database is a 30 arc-second raster database with over 15 000 different soil mapping units that combines existing regional and national updates of soil information worldwide.

Data access description here.



SoilTemp

Global database of microclimate time series (soil and near-surface temperatures, soil moisture, …) and associated species data for use in ecology and beyond.

100.000 time series from more than 100 countries across the globe, submitted by more than a thousand data contributors. The database is still under development and data is not yet open access.

Metadata of the first part of our database can however already be freely explored here.

Ecoregions

WWF MEOW

Marine Ecoregions of the World: A Bioregionalization of Coastal and Shelf Areas

Super easy shapefile download here!



WWF TEOW

Terrestrial Ecoregions of the World

Super easy shapefile download here!

Protected areas

WDPA

Most comprehensive global database of marine and terrestrial protected areas. It is a joint project between UN Environment Programme and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Interactive exploration here.

And a user guide PDF

Country boundaries

GADM

GADM provides maps and spatial data for all countries and their sub-divisions.

Browse our maps or download the data by country.



Natural Earth

Natural Earth is a public domain map dataset available at 1:10m, 1:50m, and 1:110 million scales. Featuring tightly integrated vector and raster data.

Available features list here.

Country boundaries

Also, check ou the R package rnaturalearth:

library(rnaturalearth)
library(ggplot2)

world <- ne_countries()
africa <- ne_countries(continent = "africa")
france <- ne_countries(country = "france")

theme_set(theme_bw())
ggplot(africa) + geom_sf()

Elevation & Bathymetry

DEM

Digital Elevation Model.

Plenty available, but main ones are listed here.



Bio-oracle

Essential physical, chemical, biological and topographic data layers with global extent and uniform resolution for modelling the distribution of marine biodiversity.

Download manager here.

Also features bathymetry.

Satellite data

LandSat

Joint program of the USGS and NASA from 1972 through the present day. Today the Landsat satellites image the entire Earth’s surface at a 30-meter resolution about once every two weeks, including multispectral and thermal data.

Check out LandSat collections here.


Modis

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensors on NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites have been acquiring images of the Earth daily since 1999, including daily imagery, 16-day BRDF-adjusted surface reflectance, and derived products such as vegetation indices and snow cover.

Check out Modis collections here



/! Satellite data is quite technical. Make sure you read the documentation - it’s easy to get lost.

Socio-economics

FAO

Food and Agricultural Organization has a variety of statistical data on food, agriculture and the sustainable management of natural resources.

Free and unrestricted access to 22 major databases. Check out portals list here.

 biodiversitydata/environment-data   •    cc-by-4.0