The European Marine Observation and Data Network/EMODnet

Infographics of the EMODnet central portal

The European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODnet) has launched a fully unified marine data service with major updates and functionality: One ocean, one EMODnet.

More than 120 organizations involved in the European Maritime Observation and Data Network (EMODnet) work together to aggregate observations and data from different sources, process them according to international standards, and make this information freely available as compatible data layers and data products for re-use using.

EMODnet services are based on the philosophy of "collect once and use many times", which benefits all users of marine data, including policymakers, scientists, the private sector, and the public. Such an integrated marine data service will create and improve the accuracy of marine research and open new opportunities for innovation and growth.

A key element of EMODnet is the  map viewer that offers the user easy and seamless access to search, visualize and download marine data from seven themes covering the marine environment and human activities, as well as hundreds of data and data products. 

EMODnet enables seamless cross-border, interdisciplinary data retrieval at the level required by marine managers and policymakers, the blue economy, and the private sector, as well as the research community.

The centralization of all EMODnet thematic data services was carried out by the European Commission's Directorate-General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries (DG MARE). This is a major achievement in ocean observations and marine data, and the result of more than a year of technical development by EMODnet experts/ EMODnet Central Portal team, coordinated by the Flanders Maritime Institute (VLIZ) and the EMODnet Secretariat.

The centralization of EMODnet is a huge achievement for the full EMOD network and for the European Maritime Data Space, leading to significant improvements in the interoperability of EMODnet maritime data as the key backbone infrastructure of the future Digital Twin Ocean.

Combining EMODnet's services puts EMODnet in a strong position to deliver the marine data, information and knowledge society needs to meet the objectives of the EU's mission to Restore our Oceans and Waters by 2030 and the wider objectives of the EU Green Deal.

EMODnet Map Viewer/Data Portal Catalog offers services for assessment of data by species and habitats, the list of which is given below:

Fig. EMODnet Map Viewer/Data Portal  Catalog  with   Habitat Suitability Maps for Asparagopsis armata for assessment of the habitat. The number of marine seaweeds outside their natural boundaries has increased in the last decades generating impacts on biodiversity and economy - offshore structures in Adriatic Sea. This makes the development of management tools necessary, where species distribution models (SDMs) play a crucial role. SDMs can help in the early detection of invasions and predict the extent of the potential spread. However, modelling non-native marine species distributions is still challenging in terms of model building, evaluation and selection. This product aims to predict the European distribution of four widespread introduced seaweed species (Asparagopsis armata, Caulerpa Taxifolia, Sargassum muticum and Undaria pinnatifida) selecting the best model building process.

Fig. EMODnet Map Viewer/Data Catalog for assessment of bentos in Adriatic  Sea/Mediterranean Sea. 

Fig. EMODnet Map Viewer/Data Catalog for assessment of bentos in North  Sea. 

This product builds on the EMODnet Biology data product Presence/absence data of macrozoobenthos in the European Seas to derive estimates of temporal turnover in benthic communities on a spatial grid across European seas. This product only uses species-level records, and only uses sampling events where the full macrobenthic community was surveyed (i.e. where there are no 'NA' values in the presence/absence dataset for any species). Six time periods are considered, based on data availability: before 1990, 1990-1999, 2000-2004, 2005-2009, 2010-2014, and 2015 and after. A 1 degree grid is used to obtain reasonable numbers of repeat samples per grid cell. The code below could be adapted to set different time periods and/or a different grid resolution.

Fig. EMODnet Map Viewer/Data Catalog for assessment of bentos in the European  Sea. 

Fig. EMODnet Map Viewer/Data Catalog for assessment of the Mixoplankton in North  Sea. Mixoplankton (sensu Flynn et al., 2019) is a newly introduced term indicating plankton that is capabable of both photosynthesis and phagotrophy. More details are found in Flynn et al., (2019). The potential trophic state can be seen as an inherent characteristic of plankton species. A literature and expert-knowledge study has provided the classification in either phototrophy or mixotrophy which is submitted as traits data to WoRMS. This analysis makes use of this classification to estimate the spatial and temporal distribution of the fraction of mixoplanktonic species in the Greater North Sea including the Celtic Seas 

Fig. EMODnet Map Viewer/Data Catalog for assessment of  Emerald Network sites  in Adriatic  Sea. 

Fig. EMODnet Map Viewer/Data Catalog for assessment of  EEA's Common Database on Designated Areas (CDDA)  in Adriatic  Sea. 

This dataset has been created in 2022 by Cogea for the European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODnet). It contains coastal and marine protected areas in the European seas for those countries that are not covered by the the EEA's Common Database on Designated Areas (CDDA). This dataset is entirely based on GIS Data from the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA), the most comprehensive global database of marine and terrestrial protected areas, plus external links and selected tabular data joined by Cogea to the feature attributes, as well as the calculation of marine and coastal location of features. The WDPA is a joint project between UN Environment Programme and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and is managed by UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), in collaboration with governments, non-governmental organisations, academia and industry. The whole datatset is made available online through Protected Planet at https://www.protectedplanet.net/en, where the data are both viewable and downloadable, while the EMODnet subset of data is available at the EMODnet Human Activities portal. In the webmap the WDPA dataset has been filtered by Cogea to show only (i) predominantly or entirely marine areas (MARINE field value=2), and (ii) areas, which even if not identified as predominantly or entirely marine in the WDPA, intersect the coastline or are within a distance of 1 km from the coastline. In both cases the COAST_MAR field value=1. Countries coverage of GIS vector boundary data is: Algeria, Egypt, Georgia, Israel, Lebanon, Monaco, Morocco, Palestine, Russian Federation, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine and the United Kingdom (including Guernsey, Isle of Man, and Jersey). 

Fig. EMODnet Map Viewer/Data Catalog for assessment of Nature 2000 sites in the Adriatic Sea/Mediterranean Sea. 

Fig. Assessment of habitats and Habitat Suitability Maps for Asparagopsis armata, Caulerpa Taxifolia,  Sargassum muticum and Undaria pinnatifida in North Sea.

 The number of marine seaweeds outside their natural boundaries has increased in the last decades generating impacts on biodiversity and economy. This makes the development of management tools necessary, where species distribution models (SDMs) play a crucial role. SDMs can help in the early detection of invasions and predict the extent of the potential spread. However, modelling non-native marine species distributions is still challenging in terms of model building, evaluation and selection. This product aims to predict the European distribution of four widespread introduced seaweed species (Asparagopsis armata, Caulerpa Taxifolia, Sargassum muticum and Undaria pinnatifida) selecting the best model building process.

Fig. EMODnet Map Viewer/Data Catalog for assessment of offshore structures in Adriatic Sea/Mediterranean Sea. Map with location: Offshore Installations.

Fig. EMODnet Map Viewer/Data Catalog for assessment of offshore structures in Adriatic Sea/Mediterranean Sea. Map with location: Offshore Installations/  Closed Down