Raw Stressor Data: A Global Map of Human Impact on Marine Ecosystems, 2008

What happens in the vast stretches of the world's oceans - both wondrous and worrisome - has too often been out of sight, out of mind. The sea represents the last major scientific frontier on planet earth - a place where expeditions continue to discover not only new species, but even new phyla. The role of these species in the ecosystem, where they sit in the tree of life, and how they respond to environmental changes really do constitute mysteries of the deep. Despite technological advances that now allow people to access, exploit or affect nearly all parts of the ocean, we still understand very little of the ocean's biodiversity and how it is changing under our influence. The goal of the research presented here is to estimate and visualize, for the first time, the global impact humans are having on the ocean's ecosystems. Our analysis, published in Science, February 15, 2008 (http://doi.org/10.1126/science.1149345), shows that over 40% of the world's oceans are heavily affected by human activities and few if any areas remain untouched. This dataset contains raw stressor data from 17 different human activities that directly or indirectly have an impact on the ecological communities in the ocean's ecosystems. For more information on specific dataset, see the methods section. All data are projected in WGS 1984 Mollweide.广袤无垠的世界海洋中所发生的种种——既有令人惊叹的奇景，也有令人忧心的隐患——往往长期被忽视，处于“眼不见为净”的状态。海洋乃是地球仅剩的主要科学前沿阵地：科考活动在此不仅持续发现新物种，甚至还能发掘全新的门（phylum）级类群。这些物种在生态系统中的功能角色、其在生命之树上的演化位置，以及对环境变化的响应机制，皆构成了深邃海洋中的未解之谜。尽管当前科技进步已使人类得以近乎全面地接触、开发乃至影响全球海洋的几乎所有区域，但我们对海洋生物多样性及其在人类活动影响下的变化规律仍知之甚少。本项研究的核心目标，乃是首次量化并可视化人类活动对全球海洋生态系统造成的整体影响。我们的分析成果已于2008年2月15日发表于《科学》（Science）期刊（链接：http://doi.org/10.1126/science.1149345），结果显示全球超过40%的海洋已遭受人类活动的严重干扰，几乎没有任何区域能完全免受影响。本数据集收录了17种不同人类活动的原始压力因子数据，这些活动会直接或间接作用于海洋生态系统中的生物群落。如需了解该数据集的详细信息，请参阅研究方法部分。所有数据均采用WGS 1984摩尔魏特（Mollweide）投影坐标系。