Southern Ocean Benthic Classification (SOBC) - ecoregions, bathomes and environmental types

The study area spans the region managed by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR). The northern boundary of this region is a line approximating the location of the Polar Front. The southern boundary was defined as the northern edge of the permanent ice shelf of the Antarctic continent.

The shapefile can be used to identify three levels of the hierarchical classification (see Fig. 1 of Douglass et al., 2014): 1) Level 1: Ecoregions 2) Level 2b: Geomorphic features nested in each ecoregion 3) Level 3: Environmental Types The dataset cannot be used to analyse a level 2a nesting since for some geomorphic features (e.g. seamounts and canyons) the nested bathomes were combined when generating environmental types.

If a level 2a nesting is required please contact douglass.lucinda@gmail.com The shapefile contains ten fields: EcoID- Abbreviated Level 1 benthic ecoregion names Ecoregion- Level 1 benthic ecoregion names Geomorph2- Geomorphic features BathID- Bathome identification number which can be used to sort the depth classes Bathome2 - Bathome EcoGeo- Level 2b nesting of geomorphic features in each ecoregion EnvTyp- Level 3 environmental types GeoClsID- Geomorphic class identification number GeoCls- Geomorphic classes Sqkm- Area in square kilometers