Global map of human impacts on oceans

You can view human impacts on our oceans with this global oceans map.

http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/GlobalMarine

In February the journal Science published the first global map of human impacts on marine ecosystems. This study suggests that about 41 percent of oceans bear a serious human "footprint " and few areas remain untouched.

The researchers compiled data on 17 different human impacts to oceans, including fishing, coastal development, fertilizer runoff and pollution from shipping traffic, and considered how these numerous human impacts would combine to affect 20 types of ecosystems.

Their results suggest that coral reefs have been particularly hard hit while other ecosystems such as seagrass beds, mangrove forests in estuaries, seamounts, rocky reefs and continental shelves are also in trouble. Soft-bottom shallow and deep ecosystems, as well as the open ocean, were better off, though even they were not pristine in a majority of locations.

The oceans around the Artic and Antarctic poles have been the least affected, but this is likely to change as climate change takes its toll. Very limited impacts are also seen around northern Australia, in areas across the western-central Pacific and in small areas scattered along the coasts of South America and Africa. Unfortunately however, these estimates of human impact are probably optimistic as the study only considered impacts where sufficient data was available.

A Google Earth layer of this study can be downloaded from this link: http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/GlobalMarine

Download the Marine Impacts KML to view the cumulative impact map in Google Earth

For more information, please contact:
Brooke Corrigan
Email Brooke Corrigan