The Environmental Database -- An Introduction

This database has been developed to support environmental classification (typology) for the purpose of understanding spatial and temporal patterns in biogeochemistry (carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus cycling) and biogeography (the distribution of organisms).  Its objective is to provide global coverages of readily accessible, consistently presented, relevant data for use by a diverse group of users. It supports viewing and basic statistical analysis of the data on-line, transformaion of variables, and filtering of data sets. The data sets may be downloaded, or sent directly to the LOICZVIEW geospatial clustering tool.  The database is oriented toward coastal zone and marine studies at global and large regional scales, but is designed to be consistent with and useful for analyses in terrestrial environments and at smaller scales as well. It contains public-domain, global data sets on geomorphic, atmospheric, oceanographic, terrestrial, and 'human dimension' variables, in a consistent format of a global grid system with cells that occupy one-half degree (30') of latitude and longitude. In addition to data on the variable values for the cells themselves, two special categories of information are included: river basin variables, and coastal biogeochemical budget variables.

The grid system used (30', or about 55 km on a side at the equator), is relatively coarse for local studies, but is typical of the best resolution available at the global scale for many marine and atmospheric variables.  The cells are identified not only by location, but by type -- the overall coastal zone consists of 'coastal' cells (defined as those containing a significant length of shoreline), 'terrestrial' cells (a strip extending about one degree inland from the coastal cells) and 'Ocean I' cells (extending about one degree seaward of the coastal cells, or farther in areas of extensive continental shelf).  The remainder of the ocean is characterized as either Ocean II (relatively enclosed seas or basins) and Ocean III (all other) cell categories.  Land cells inland from the 'terrestrial cells are identified as 'inland' cells. Higher resolution data, when available, is incorporated into the half-degree cell system by techniques such as identifying percent of cell area associated with specific classes, statistics on the within cell distribution of values (mean, standard deviation, range, etc.), and similar techniques.

The data are useful and available for a wide range of purposes, but among the primary applications are:

A major tool for the analysis, generalization, and visualization process is the LOICZVIEW geospatial clustering routine, which provides supervised and unsupervised clustering, cluster/variable comparison, principle component analysis, and visualization of results.  It is accessible by Internet; it is linked directly to the database, but can also be used independently with other data sets. Click here for the information page; here to log in to the application.