Tóth, Anikó B., Terauds, Aleks, Chown, Steven L., Hughes, Kevin A., Convey, Peter, Hodgson, Dominic A., Cowan, Don A., Gibson, John, Leihy, Rachel I., Murray, Nicholas J., Robinson, Sharon A., Shaw, Justine D., Stark, Jonathan S., Stevens, Mark I., van den Hoff, John, Wasley, Jane, and Keith, David A. (2025) A dataset of Antarctic ecosystems in ice-free lands: classification, descriptions, and maps. Scientific Data, 12. 133.

Preview

PDF (Published Version) - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (2MB) | Preview

Abstract

Antarctica, Earth’s least understood and most remote continent, is threatened by human disturbances and climate-related changes, underscoring the imperative for biodiversity inventories to inform conservation. Antarctic ecosystems support unique species and genetic diversity, deliver essential ecosystem services and contribute to planetary stability. We present Antarctica’s first comprehensive ecosystem classification and map of ice-free lands, which host most of the continent’s biodiversity. We used latent variables in factor analyses to partition continental-scale abiotic variation, then biotic variation represented in spatial models, and finally recognised regional-scale variation among biogeographic units. This produced a spatially explicit hierarchical classification with nine Major Environment Units (Tier 1), 33 Habitat Complexes (Tier 2) and 269 Bioregional Ecosystem Types (Tier 3) mapped at 100 m resolution and aligned with ‘level 4’ of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology. This comprehensive ecosystem inventory provides foundational data to inform protected area designation under the Antarctic Treaty’s Environmental Protocol and track risks to Antarctic ecosystems. Its tiered structure and workflow accommodate data scarcity and facilitate updates, promoting robustness as knowledge builds.

Item ID:	86392
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	2052-4463
Copyright Information:	© The Author(s) 2025. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Funders:	Australian Research Council (ARC)
Projects and Grants:	ARC SR200100005
Date Deposited:	28 Jul 2025 06:34
FoR Codes:	31 BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES > 3103 Ecology > 310308 Terrestrial ecology @ 100%
SEO Codes:	18 ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT > 1806 Terrestrial systems and management > 180606 Terrestrial biodiversity @ 100%
Downloads:	Total: 1 Last 12 Months: 1
	More Statistics