Understanding the relationship between marine species and their environment is key to biodiversity research and conservation. For years, terrestrial scientists have relied on WorldClim for high-resolution environmental data. Now, marine researchers have their equivalent: Bio-ORACLE.

Originally launched in 2012, Bio-ORACLE provides crucial data on ecologically important ocean variables. Our latest update significantly expands this resource, incorporating:

  1. Future Climate Scenarios: The newest IPCC climate models, including Shared Socioeconomic Pathways, for long-term projections.
  2. Enhanced Data: New variables such as sea ice thickness, dissolved iron, phytoplankton, and light at the seafloor.
  3. Ocean Depths: Near-bottom data layers to model the rich biodiversity of deeper marine habitats. The importance of these additions is evident in the vast temperature differences between surface and bottom waters (sometimes exceeding 28°C!). We’ve rigorously tested our new data against quality-controlled sources, ensuring accuracy.

The R package facilitates listing, extraction and management of the data layers provided by Bio-ORACLE, as well as easy integration with the available pipelines for bioclimatic modelling.

Listing and extracting environmental data

# Install package
devtools::install_github("bio-oracle/biooracler")

# Load package
library(biooracler)

# Search available layers
list_layers()
list_layers("Ocean Temperature")

# Layer information
info_layer("tas_baseline_2000_2020_depthsurf")

# Download layers
dataset_id <- "tas_baseline_2000_2020_depthsurf"

time = c('2001-01-01T00:00:00Z', '2010-01-01T00:00:00Z')
latitude = c(10, 20)
longitude = c(120, 130)

constraints = list(time, latitude, longitude)
names(constraints) = c("time", "latitude", "longitude")

variables = c("tas_max", "tas_min")
layers <- download_layers(dataset_id, variables, constraints)
Data can also be downloaded at bio-oracle.org using the interactive download page, while R and Python packages are available at github.com/bio-oracle.


Why This Matters

Bio-ORACLE is an indispensable tool for marine scientists, conservationists, and anyone interested in the ocean’s future. Use this powerful dataset in Species Distribution Modelling (SDM) to predict the distribution of species at the global scale, including non-­native species, address niche-­based questions and phylogeographic hypotheses, identify biodiversity hotspots and support the conservation and management of marine biodiversity. Moreover, the development of biologically meaningful variables for future climate change scenarios (e.g. dissolved oxygen, primary productivity and pH) allows more realistic estimates of the anthropogenic pressures that may lead to extinction and turnover of populations.