Mapping World Terrestrial Ecosystems-GIS and Cartographic Approaches

The U.S. Geological Survey, Esri, and The Nature Conservancy have collaboratively published a new map of globally comprehensive, standardized, high resolution (250 m), and data-derived World Terrestrial Ecosystems as land areas with distinct combinations of climate regime, landforms, and vegetation/land cover assemblages. 431 ecosystems were mapped at the globally aggregated level, and 1778 ecosystems were mapped when stratified by biogeographic realm (Nearctic, Neotropical, Palearctic, Afrotropical, Australasian, Indomalayan, and Oceania). The new map of these ecosystems follows in Figure 1: