The International Bathymetric Chart of the Southern Ocean (IBCSO) Version 1.0

The International Bathymetric Chart of the Southern Ocean (IBCSO) Version 1.0 is a new digital bathymetric model (DBM) portraying the seafloor of the circum-Antarctic waters south of 60° S. IBCSO is a regional mapping project of the General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO). IBCSO Version 1.0 DBM has been compiled from all available bathymetric data collectively gathered by more than 30 institutions from 15 countries. These data include multibeam and single beam echo soundings, digitized depths from nautical charts, regional bathymetric gridded compilations, and predicted bathymetry. Specific gridding techniques were applied to compile the DBM from the bathymetric data of different origin, spatial distribution, resolution, and quality. The IBCSO Version 1.0 DBM has a resolution of 500 x 500 m, based on a polar stereographic projection, and is publicly available together with a digital chart for printing from the project website (http://www.ibcso.org) and from the two data sets shown at the bottom of this page.

Deforesting Europe: pollen-inferred Holocene land cover change using the 'pseudobiomization' approach

Maps of continental-scale land cover are utilized by a range of diverse users but whilst a range of products exist that describe present and recent land cover in Europe, there are currently no datasets that describe past variations over long time-scales. User groups with an interest in past land cover include the climate modelling community, socio-ecological historians and earth system scientists. Europe is one of the continents with the longest histories of land conversion from forest to farmland, thus understanding land cover change in this area is globally significant. This study applies the pseudobiomization method (PBM) to 982 pollen records from across Europe, taken from the European Pollen Database (EPD) to produce a first synthesis of pan-European land cover change for the period 9000 BP to present, in contiguous 200 year time intervals. The PBM transforms pollen proportions from each site to one of eight land cover classes (LCCs) that are directly comparable to the CORINE land cover classification. The proportion of LCCs represented in each time window provides a spatially aggregated record of land cover change for temperate and northern Europe, and for a series of case study regions (western France, the western Alps, and the Czech Republic and Slovakia). At the European scale, the impact of Neolithic food producing economies appear to be detectable from 6000 BP through reduction in broad-leaf forests resulting from human land use activities such as forest clearance. Total forest cover at a pan-European scale moved outside the range of previous background variability from 4000 BP onwards. From 2200 BP land cover change intensified, and the broad pattern of land cover for preindustrial Europe was established by 1000 BP. Recognizing the timing of anthropogenic land cover change in Europe will further the understanding of land cover-climate interactions, and the origins of the modern cultural landscape.