Biodiversity
Our Earth is home to millions of species on land and in water. Explore data from across the federal government on biological diversity, how and why it is changing and its effects on and interactions with the Earth system.
INFO
Planetary change includes more than understanding the physical components of our planet, it also includes understanding how diversity of life on Earth is changing too. Biodiversity refers to the variety, or diversity, of all life on Earth. However, changes in temperature, precipitation and land cover directly impact the ability of species to survive and the habitats where they are found.
Researchers in local habitats work on the ground, directly monitoring vegetation and wildlife, while researchers using remote sensing techniques study biodiversity from space-based and airborne missions. Both approaches provide critical information on species richness and distribution across the globe.
Additionally, modeling can be used to forecast how species and their habitat may change in the future. This information is also used across multiple scales of research and government to inform management practices.
NASA and Biodiversity
Forest Guardians in Africa work with the Jane Goodall Institute and use Earth science data to protect local chimpanzee habitats.
Related Data Visualizations
Ecological insights from three decades of animal movement tracking across a changing Arctic
The Arctic Animal Movement Archive (AAMA) is a new and growing collection of studies describing movements of animals in and near the Arctic. The AAMA includes millions of locations of thousands of animals over more than three decades, recorded by hundreds of scientists and institutions. By compiling these data, the AAMA supports public data discovery, preserves fundamental baseline data for the future, and facilitates efficient, collaborative data analysis. We have used the AAMA to document climatic influences on the migration phenology of golden eagles, geographic differences in the adaptive response of caribou reproductive phenology to climate change, species-specific changes in terrestrial mammal movement rates in response to increasing temperature, and the utility of animal-borne sensors as proxies for ambient air temperature. The AAMA is a living archive that can be used to uncover other such changes, investigate their causes and consequences, and recognize larger ecosystem changes taking place in the Arctic.\n\nThis visualization shows multiple years of AAMA data as if all of the data were from the same year. Several different groupings of animals are shown: marine mammals, raptors, seabirds, shorebirds, terrestrial mammals, and waterbirds. Snow and sea ice are also shown for context as they correlate to animal movements.\n\nVisualizers: Greg Shirah (lead), Lori Perkins\n\nFor more information or to download this public domain video, go to https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4877
