Overview




Most recent project

We mapped the cumulative impact of human activities on global oceans from 2003 to 2013. We found that our impact is increasing for the majority of the ocean (59%). Most of the increase was due to climate change but also from fishing, land-based pollution, and shipping.

Citation: Halpern, B.S., Frazier, M., Afflerbach, J., Lowndes, J.S., Micheli, F., O’Hara, C., Scarborough, C., Selkoe, K.A., 2019. Recent pace of change in human impact on the world’s ocean. Sci Rep 9, 11609. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-47201-9

Accessing the data

The data from this analysis are available from KNB, with a package for each stressor (link to the KNB package by clicking the “Data package name”).

All raster files are .tif format and coordinate reference system is mollweide wgs84.

Category Data package name Description
Cumulative impact Cumulative impacts The cumulative impact of all 14 stressors on 21 marine habitats
Land-based Organic chemical pollution relative intensity of organic pollution due to pesticide runoff from land-based applications
Land-based Nutrient pollution relative intensity of nutrient pollution due to fertilizer runoff from land-based applications
Land-based Light pollution relative magnitude of light pollution in coastal environments
Land-based Direct human disturbance magnitude of direct human interactions on coastal and near-coastal habitats, such as trampling
Climate Sea level rise magnitude of increasing sea level due to increasing atmospheric CO2 levels from human influences
Climate Ocean acidification magnitude of decreasing aragonite saturation state due to increasing atmospheric CO2 levels from human influences
Climate Sea surface temperature frequency of extreme temperature events relative to a historical baseline period
Fisheries Commercial fishing - pelagic low-bycatch tonnes of pelagic fisheries catch using low bycatch gear types, standardized by Net Primary Productivity
Fisheries Commercial fishing - pelagic high-bycatch tonnes of pelagic fisheries catch using high bycatch gear types, standardized by Net Primary Productivity
Fisheries Commercial fishing - demersal non-destructive high-bycatch tonnes of demersal fisheries catch using nondestructive, but high bycatch, gear types, standardized by Net Primary Productivity
Fisheries Commercial fishing - demersal non-desctructive low-bycatch tonnes of demersal fisheries catch using nondestructive and low bycatch gear types, standardized by Net Primary Productivity
Fisheries Commercial fishing - demersal destructive tonnes of catch using demersal destructive gear types, standardized by Net Primary Productivity
Fisheries Artisanal fishing tonnes of artisanal fisheries catch standardized by Net Primary Productivity
Shipping Shipping relative intensity of global shipping traffic

Each data package includes:

The Cumulative impact package includes:

The code to create and analyze these data is available from Github: https://github.com/OHI-Science/impact_acceleration

Earlier projects

We mapped the change, using 2008 and 2013 data, in cumulative impacts to global marine ecosystems from fishing, climate change, and ocean- and land-based stressors (Halpern et al. 2015). Seven data packages are available from KNB:

  1. supplementary data habitat data and other files

  2. raw stressor data 2008 and 2013

  3. stressor data rescaled by one time period 2008 and 2013, scaled from 0-1

  4. stressor data rescaled by two time periods 2008 and 2013, scaled from 0-1

  5. pressure and cumulative impacts data 2013, all pressures

  6. pressure and cumulative impacts data 2008 and 2013, subset updated for both time periods

  7. change in pressures and cumulative impact 2008 to 2013

Description of data: Raw stressor data -> rescaled stressor data (values rescaled to be between 0-1) -> pressure data (stressor data after adjusting for habitat/pressure vulnerability) -> cumulative impact (sum of pressure data) -> difference between 2008 and 2013 pressure and cumulative impact data.

All raster files are .tif format and coordinate reference system is mollweide wgs84.

Original Cumulative Human Impact Data

The original project for mapping the cumulative human impact to marine ecosystems (Halpern et al. 2008) additionally has 4 packages of data, with the main cumulative impact data available along with several nested datasets available within that page.