Title

Marine Ecoregions of the World (MEOW)

License

Not Specified

+ The original author did not specify a license.

Abstract

Marine Ecoregions of the World (MEOW) is a biogeographic classification of the world's coasts and shelves. It is the first ever comprehensive marine classification system with clearly defined boundaries and definitions and was developed to closely link to existing regional systems. The ecoregions nest within the broader biogeographic tiers of Realms and Provinces.

MEOW represents broad-scale patterns of species and communities in the ocean, and was designed as a tool for planning conservation across a range of scales and assessing conservation efforts and gaps worldwide. The current system focuses on coast and shelf areas and does not consider realms in pelagic or deep benthic environment. It is hoped that parallel but distinct systems for pelagic and deep benthic biotas will be devised in the near future.

The project was led by WWF and The Nature Conservancy, with broad input from a working group representing key NGO, academic and intergovernmental conservation partners.

Publication Date

Nov. 25, 2016, 1:20 p.m.

Type

Vector Data

Keywords

Biogeography , Downloadable Data , Ecoregion , features , Marine Layer , Marine_Provinces , Oceans , Realm , Shelf , World

Category

Oceans

features and characteristics of salt water bodies (excluding inland waters). Examples: tides, tidal waves, coastal information, reefs

Regions

Global

Owner

jcleary

Group

Marine Geospatial Ecology Lab at Duke University

More info

-

Restrictions

All data are provided as is. This is not a survey quality dataset. The authors make no warranty as to the currency, completeness, accuracy or utility of any specific data. This disclaimer applies both to individual use of the data and aggregate use with other data. It is strongly recommended that careful attention be paid to the contents of the metadata file associated with these data.

Purpose

This classification represents a new work, derived by a team representing various conservation NGOs and acadamics. It is partly derived from existing clas...

Language

English

Data Quality

The general standard used to delineate biogeographic boundaries is that they follow taxonomic (phylogenetic) boundaries, with the finest level (ecoregional) boundaries marking out areas of relatively homogenous species composition. The classification is largely based on existing regional classifications and there is some variance in the approaches used by the original authors although every effort was made to develop an internally consistent report and to reject sources that were not in accord with the definitions developed and presented in Spalding et al 2007.

Supplemental Information

USERS PLEASE NOTE - shapefile does NOT accurately represent outer MEOW boundaries: As specified in the original publications, the boundaries in this shapefil...

Layer WMS GetCapabilities document