Environment databases

frequently used in biodiversity research

June 2025

Nicolas Casajus

Camille Coux

Romain Frelat

Data scientists
@ FRB-CESAB    

Setting the stage

Objective:

You want to add information not measured in the field to your data
and you have collected the GPS coordinates (and you know the projection system) 👍

Issues:

• Many sources: satellite, re-analysis, models, …
• Many providers: Copernicus, IGN, NOAA, …
• Many disciplines: climate, soil, hydrology, remote sensing, social sciences
• Fast evolving field, many newly released datasets, hard to keep track of updates

Questions to ask:

• What data do I need to answer my research question?
  
• Define the spatial extent and resolution
  
• Define temporal extent and resolution

Spatial extent

France

• IGN
• data.gouv.fr
• Sandre

Europe

• Copernicus: land, climate, marine
• EU JRC
• EU Env. Agency
• data.europa.eu

World

• EarthEnv(terrestrial, 1km)
• Bio-Oracle(marine, 0.05°)

• Google Earth Engine
• OpenLandMap
• R package Geodata

Topics

Climate

• WorldClim
• Chelsa
• ERA5 (reanalysis, World)
• E-OBS (observation, Europe)

Land cover

• Corine LC
• ESA WorldCover
• ESA Climate Change Initiative
• GLFC_FCS30D

Soil

• ISRIC Soil Grids (250m)
• FAO Harmonized World Soil Database (HWSD)(1km)
• European Soil Database (ESDAC)
• BDGSF (France)

Elevation and bathymetry

• Copernicus DEM GLO 30
  
• SRTM
  
• GEBCO
• OpenTopography

Biomes and Ecoregions

• FAO Global Agro-Ecological Zones
• Koppen-Geiger climate maps
• Copernicus Global Biomes
• WWF Ecoregions Terrestrial and Marine

Population density

• WorldPop
• NASA Gridded Population of the World (GPW)
• JRC Global Human Settlement

GIS tools

Good news: you can do all your analysis in .

Recommended tutorials:

• Spatial data science with R and terra
• Spatial Data Science with application in R (sf and stars)
• Spatial Statistics for Data Science: Theory and Practice with R

Other tools:

• Google Earth Engine
  Good alternative to avoid downloading large data and make use of Google computation power (for academics only)
  
• Quantum GIS
  Open source alternative to ArcGIS. Dedicated GIS tool, helpful to create professional maps

Please contact me if you have any questions : romain.frelat@fondationbiodiversite.fr