To mark the International Day for Biological Diversity 2012 theme of Marine Biodiversity UNEP-WCMC launches the Marine and Coastal Habitat Validation Tool.

With support from multiple organizations and developed at UNEP-WCMC this online mapping and validation tool will facilitate the improvement of key global datasets, beginning with the critical coastal habitats of mangroves, coral reefs and saltmarshes. New conceptual approaches to marine management are emerging, but their effectiveness are underpinned by the accessibility of timely, relevant fit for-purpose data. This centralized improvement of consistency and accuracy of these critical coastal habitat datasets will work to address key monitoring and data validation needs and aid decision-makers in identifying areas for conservation action.

The beta version allows editing of the Global Distribution of Coral Reefs (2010) (original version downloadable from our Ocean Data Viewer) and the African subset of the USGS Global Distribution of Mangrove (2000) dataset, as well as facilitating creation of new saltmarsh data.

The Marine and Coastal Habitat Validation Tool can be accessed here.