Environment databases

Most frequently used databases in biodiversity research

August 2026

Camille Coux

Data scientist
@FRB-CESAB    

Data lifecycle

Data lifecycle

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

Water bodies

  • Global Surface Waters
  • World rivers

Elevation & Bathymetry

  • DEM
  • Bio-oracle


Soil data

  • SoilTemp
  • HWSD

Ecoregions

  • WWF MEOW
  • WWF TEOW

Protected areas

  • WDPA

Country boundaries

  • Natural Earth
  • GADM


Socio-economics

  • FAO
  • UNDP
  • Human Footprint

Satellite data

  • NDVI
  • LandSat
  • Modis

Data aggregators

  • Data Terra
  • Earth Engine
  • datagouv

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

Daily, monthly, annual means for temperature, precipitation, wind speed, droughts, etc.

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.

Water bodies

World rivers

HydroSheds: a suite of global digital data layers in support of hydro-ecological research and applications worldwide. Its various hydrographic data products include catchment boundaries, river networks, and lakes at multiple resolutions and scales.
Hydrography.org: 90m layers, world wide, mostly rasters. Lots of physical measures (stream length, water accumulation, etc). Multiple access possibilities.

Global Surface Waters

30m resolution World surface waters from 1984-2024.

Download here

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.

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.


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

Check out the package rnaturalearth:


## Import boundaries of Africa ----

africa <- rnaturalearth::ne_countries(
  continent = "africa"
)


## Map layer ----

library(ggplot2)

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

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.

Human Footprint

A global map of human influence on the land surface.

Access via Google Earth Engine, Github or direct GeoTiff download here.

Data aggregators

Theia data catalog

Five major themes: cryosphere, continental waters, land cover, agrosystems & biodiversity and imagery & radiometry.


ODATIS Ocean Center

French Ocean observation data : Ocean observations sampled in situ and using remote sensing.


FormaTerre

On-demand processing for Digital Surface Models, ground deformation monitoring, etc.


PNDB, the biodiversity hub

Metadata catalog to access biodiversity data.


AERIS

National data management activities and atmospheric science expertise.

Data aggregators

See also:

Earth Engine Data Catalog




For France : Datagouv

Extra goodies

A non-exhaustive sheet compiled by our CESAB colleague Romain Frelat.