Marine local ecological footprinting tool (Marine LEFT)

Providing information for risk management in the marine environment

Marine LEFT provides information about context, habitats, biodiversity, competing uses, processes and threats in the world’s oceans.

To access: www.marineleft.ox.ac.uk

Marine LEFT, is a web-based decision support tool which can help businesses minimise the environmental impacts of their activities when they make decisions about how the sea is used. A user defines an area of interest anywhere in the world using a web-based map and Marine LEFT automatically processes a series of high-quality datasets using standard published algorithms to produce:

• Exclusive economic zones
• Marine protected areas
• Marine ecoregions
• Habitat fragmentation
• Depth
• Biodiversity records of corals, marine fish, turtles, sea birds and marine mammals
• Numbers of globally threatened marine species
• Numbers of migratory marine species

These results are aggregated to produce a single map of relative ecological value. The tool then generates a customised pdf report and a zip file of GIS data for the area requested. Results are delivered to users by email within a few minutes of job submission. This tool has been designed to be highly intuitive to use, and requires no specialized software or user expertise.

Novice users can submit an analysis within a few minutes and get results which can inform business decisions.