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. The top level of this dataset contains the raster data for the modeled impacts map, along with a high resolution jpg version. Sub-levels of this dataset include: raw stressor data, transformed stressor data (raw data is log(x+1) transformed and rescaled by dividing by maximum global value so values range from 0-1), and ecosystem data. All spatial data are projected in WGS 1984 Mollweide.

全球广袤海洋中发生的种种现象——既有令人惊叹的奇观，也有令人担忧的问题——往往因远离人们的视野而被忽视，未得到应有的重视。海洋是地球仅剩的主要科学前沿之一，科考活动在此不仅持续发现新物种，甚至还能发掘全新的生物分类门（phyla）。这些物种在生态系统中的功能、它们在生命之树上的演化位置，以及对环境变化的响应机制，至今仍是深海未解之谜。尽管当前技术进步已使人类得以近乎全面地开发、利用乃至影响全球海域，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，是首次量化并可视化呈现人类活动对全球海洋生态系统造成的影响。本研究的分析结果已于2008年2月15日发表于《科学》（Science）期刊，链接为http://doi.org/10.1126/science.1149345，结果显示全球超过40%的海洋已受到人类活动的严重影响，几乎没有区域能完全免受干扰。
本数据集的顶层目录包含用于生成影响模型图的栅格数据，以及一份高分辨率JPEG（Joint Photographic Experts Group）格式文件。其子目录包含以下三类数据：原始胁迫因子数据、经转换的胁迫因子数据（原始数据经log(x+1)对数转换，并通过除以全球最大值进行归一化处理，使数值范围介于0至1之间），以及生态系统数据。所有空间数据均采用WGS 1984莫尔韦德（Mollweide）投影坐标系进行投影。