Integrative data system for monitoring biota and natural habitats in the Israeli Eastern Mediterranean marine environment

An integrative data system for monitoring the biota of the Mediterranean waters of Israel as well as selected records from adjacent Levantine basin regions is presented here, aimed at providing data and research tools for long-term bio-geographic and ecological studies and more important, providing background data for assisting governmental regulators to establish educated habitat-oriented environmental policy. The system relies on the geographic information system (GIS) online map-based platform and contains at present the following components: biotic database of ~ 170,000 recorded sampling events; uniform habitat maps of 63 benthic habitats and 2 pelagic ones, constructed using relevant bathymetric features and biotic community compositions; bathymetric hill-shade map; depth contours; raster depth grid and human interference map. Other informative auxiliary maps are planned to be added (e.g., map of potential pockmark sites, detailed maps of tiny carbonate crust nolls and more). A number of 883 cited documents were listed by us for potential extraction of sampling efforts, most of them are available to us as PDFs and are available also to the users, excluding copyright-protected ones. Forty-three major projects were depicted in addition to a variety of small studies (e.g., university theses). Thirty-five sampling devices were documented and described, and 3187 species-level identifications were already recorded. In addition, the system provides access to description of sampling devices and pictures of species and seascapes. New data is continuously deposited to the system and the system is flexible, allowing future addition of new types of information. The system site is accessible through the link: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/40e86605ff4d4e5096ed2c901fec2a2f .