Multi-resolution sampling-effort data for global biodiversity modelling

This archive provides the data products generated by a fully reproducible R workflow described in the accompanying manuscript “A global, taxon-stratified, high-resolution sampling-effort dataset from GBIF for bias-aware ecological modelling”, Diversity and Distributions.

The dataset converts raw GBIF occurrence records into spatially explicit, taxon-stratified measures of sampling effort suitable for bias-aware ecological modelling, biodiversity monitoring, and conservation planning. It offers the most detailed, standardised, and open global quantification of sampling effort currently available across multiple taxa, spatial grains, and years.

Contents

This dataset includes multi-resolution GeoTIFF raster layers representing two complementary metrics:

Observation density (n_obs) – number of cleaned occurrence records per grid cell

Survey species richness (n_sp) – number of unique GBIF speciesKey values per grid cell (excluding non-species-level identifications)

Both metrics are provided as:

Annual rasters for each year from 1980 to 2025, and

Cumulative (“total”) rasters combining all records since 1980.

Each product is available at four spatial grains:

~1 km (30 arc-seconds)

~5 km (2.5 arc-minutes)

~10 km (5 arc-minutes)

~20 km (10 arc-minutes)

Taxonomic scope

Nine major taxonomic groups are covered: Amphibia, Arachnida, Aves, Fungi, Insecta, Mammalia, Mollusca, Reptilia, and Tracheophyta (vascular plants). For each group, additional rasters are produced for descendant-level taxa at the next standard rank (e.g. orders within classes, classes within phyla), following the hierarchy described in Table 1 of the manuscript.

Additionally, the total number of species and records per grid cell is also provided: "total.zip".

Directory and file structure

For each group, raster files are organised by metric and spatial grain using the following directory names:

res_1_n_obs/

res_1_n_sp/

res_5_n_obs/

res_5_n_sp/

res_10_n_obs/

res_10_n_sp/

res_20_n_obs/

res_20_n_sp/

Each directory contains annual and cumulative GeoTIFFs named according to the convention:

<metric>_<group>_<time>_res<resolution>.tif

Examples:n_obs_Insecta_2020_res_5.tif / n_sp_Passeriformes_total_res_1.tif

All rasters use the WGS 84 coordinate reference system (EPSG:4326) and ZSTD compression.

Hosting and access

Data are hosted on the Open Science Framework (OSF) within an anonymous project created for peer review: anonymous project. Each of the nine major taxonomic groups is archived as a separate OSF component. This Zenodo record includes persistent links to those OSF components, together with supplementary metadata files.

While most data will typically be accessed directly from OSF, either manually or programmatically through a dedicated R function (currently anonymised), compressed ZIP archives for each taxonomic group are also mirrored here on Zenodo for convenience and long-term preservation.

Citation

Users should cite both the accompanying data paper and this Zenodo archive as follows:

El-Gabbas, A. (2026). A global, taxon-stratified, high-resolution sampling-effort dataset from GBIF for bias-aware ecological modelling. Diversity and Distributions.

El-Gabbas, A. (2026). Multi-resolution sampling-effort data for global biodiversity modelling. Zenodo data. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17591681

Notes on anonymity

Repository URLs, author identifiers, and final DOIs are intentionally masked for double-blind peer review.Full, permanent repository links and code archives will be made public upon manuscript acceptance or provided confidentially to editors and reviewers in accordance with journal policy.