Scientists have built the most detailed map of Earth's ecosystems

When you click, a map will open in a higher resolution.

Ecology, to put it more simply, it is a science about the interrelations of living organisms both among themselves and with the environment (including the lithosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere). The most important concept in ecology is the ecosystem - this is a biological system consisting of a community of living organisms (biocenosis), their environment (biotope), a system of bonds that exchanges matter and energy between them. The links between ecosystems are also extremely important - if some of them are broken, it can lead to unpredictable consequences.

Recently, scientists presented the most detailed map of the Earth’s ecosystems, which was called the Global Ecological Land Unit map. The elementary unit of the map is a square with a side of 250 meters. Each square shows characteristics such as climatic conditions, topographic data, and the type of terrain - from primeval forests to the sidewalk. Each pixel of the map can be described, for example, as follows: warm wet hills of volcanic rock with predominantly evergreen forests.

They created the map long and meticulously, representatives of the US Geological Survey collected data from many resources, including soil maps, digital terrain models, satellite photographs, and data from weather stations. The data collected turned out to be not just a lot, but a lot, and all this information needed to be sorted somehow. To do this, service representatives turned to Esri, a company that has been developing maps for many years. The result was a service, the link to which is given above.

The resolution of the card is unprecedented, and the service will be of great importance to many scientists and various services. So, when planning the use of a plot of land, it will be possible to understand what, for example, the development of this plot will lead to, or what consequences tree planting in a desert area will have. It will also be possible to track on the map how ecosystem change is related to climatic conditions. For beginning environmentalists, scientists have created another service that allows you to study the ecological diversity of the world.