Marine Ecoregions of the World (MEOW)

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.

Date

Edition: Version 2

Cited responsible party

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
MEOW Working Group (Spalding et al.)			Originator

Presentation form: Digital map

Purpose: This classification represents a new work, derived by a team representing various conservation NGOs and acadamics. It is partly derived from existing classifications. The layer provides a geographic framework for a broad range of analyses relating to biodiversity (including measures of condition, threat, and conservation progress) in the marine environment.

Credit: Spalding MD, Fox HE, Allen GR, Davidson N, Ferdaña ZA, Finlayson M, Halpern BS, Jorge MA, Lombana A, Lourie SA, Martin KD, McManus E, Molnar J, Recchia CA, Robertson J (2007) Marine Ecoregions of the World: a bioregionalization of coast and shelf areas. BioScience 57: 573-583.

Status: Completed

Point of contact

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
	Jamie Robertson		Point of contact

Maintenance and update frequency: Irregular

Place

Global
World
Oceans

Stratum

Ecoregion
Shelf

Theme

Biogeography
Ecoregion
Realm
Marine

Keywords

Downloadable Data

Use limitation: Any modification of the original map to ecoregion boundaries, units, names, or realm and province classes must be noted and explained alongside the original citation. (For citation, see Data Set Credit.) The MEOW Working Group (authors Spalding et al.) shall not be held liable for improper or incorrect use of the data described and/or contained herein. Any sale, distribution, loan, or offering for use of these digital data, in whole or in part, is prohibited without the approval of the MEOW Working Group. The use of these data to produce other GIS products and services with the intent to sell for a profit is prohibited without the written consent of the MEOW Working Group. All parties receiving these data must be informed of these restrictions. The MEOW Working Group and its members' respective organizations shall be acknowledged as data contributors to any reports or other products derived from these data.

Use limitation: The MEOW Working Group and The Nature Conservancy makes no warranty, expressed or implied, as to the use or appropriateness of use of the data, nor are there warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose or use. No representation is made as to the currency, accuracy or completeness of the data set or of the data sources on which it is based. The MEOW Working Group and The Nature Conservancy shall not be liable for any lost profits or consequential damages, or claims against the user by third parties.

Other constraints: 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.

Spatial representation type: Vector

Language: English

Character set: UTF8

Topic category

Oceans

Environment description: Microsoft Windows 7 Version 6.1 (Build 7601) Service Pack 1; Esri ArcGIS 10.4.1.5686

Description: publication date

Supplemental Information: USERS PLEASE NOTE - shapefile does NOT accurately represent outer MEOW boundaries: As specified in the original publications, the boundaries in this shapefile have been extended out some 200 nautical miles from land (and this buffer is extended to include any additional marine areas less than 200metres in depth which lie beyond this distance). This outer boundary buffer is primarily drawn here to ease visibility of ecoregions in global and regional scale maps. Similarly the inland boundaries of the ecoregions extend far inland - a convention to ensure inclusion of any coastline and estuarine/lagoonal systems which may be derived from different map sources. As specified, the ecoregional classification relates primarily to coast and shelf biotas for which a 200m depth contour is a more accurate indicative boundary. It is therefore not an appropriate use of the data to calculate total ecoregion areas or generate other area or volumetric dependent statistics using these boundaries alone.

Reference system identifier: EPSG / 4326 / 6.14(3.0.1)

Topology level: Geometry only

Geometric object type: Composite

Geometric object count: 232

Distribution format

Name	Version
Shapefile

Distributor

Digital transfer options

Transfer size: 0.415

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
WWW:LINK-1.0-http--link	http://www.worldwildlife.org/publications/marine-ecoregions-of-the-world-a-bioregionalization-of-coastal-and-shelf-areas	WWF - Marine Ecoregions of the World
OGC:WMS	http://geo.vliz.be/geoserver/Ecoregions/wms	ecoregions
OGC:WMS	http://geo.vliz.be/geoserver/Ecoregions/wms	provinces
OGC:WMS	http://geo.vliz.be/geoserver/Ecoregions/wms	realm
WWW:LINK-1.0-http--link	http://www.marineregions.org/sources.php#meow	Marine Regions - Marine Ecoregions of the World, MEOW (Spalding et al., 2007)

Hierarchy level: Dataset

Conceptual consistency

Measure description: 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.

Completeness omission

Measure description: Global

Metadata

File identifier: a64af58c-65f7-4294-8ba7-7907656cc7e0 XML

Metadata language: English

Character set: UTF8

Hierarchy level: Dataset

Hierarchy level name: dataset

Date stamp: 2016-11-25T12:11:40

Metadata standard name: ISO 19139 Geographic Information - Metadata - Implementation Specification

Metadata standard version: 2007

Metadata author

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
The Nature Conservancy	James Robertson	jrobertson@tnc.org	Point of contact

Overviews

Marine Realms (limited to the coastline)

Marine Provinces (limited to the coastline)

Marine Ecoregions (limited to the coastline)

Spatial extent

Provided by

Access to the catalogue

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