Ocean Pollution (Shipping Lanes, Ports) Pressures 2013 - KNB

This data layer shows the ocean-based pollution from stressor data after adjusting for habitat/pressure vulnerability. This data layer combines estimates of pollution coming from commercial shipping and from ports. As such, it is a combination of the shipping and port volume data layers, with the port volume data plumed to estimate pollution from commercial ports (with exponential decline in intensity from the port). Ocean-based pollution is assumed to derive from commercial and recreational ship activity. No data on global recreational ship activity currently exist, and therefore we modelled this driver to oceans using a combination of the commercial shipping traffic data and port data. The shipping data provide an estimate of the occurrence of ships at a particular location, and therefore an estimate of the amount of pollution they produce (via fuel leaks, oil discharge, waste disposal, etc.) that is unique from their contribution to ship strikes, etc. described above. We recognize that ocean currents can disperse this pollution into untraveled regions, but small-scale oceanography is known for only a few select locations around the world, and pollutants are likely to be most concentrated in high traffic areas. The dispersal of port-derived pollution was modelled as a diffusive plume with a maximum distance of 100 km. These plumes were not clipped to shallow regions as was done for Invasive Species. Pressure data was calculated for each stressor by: (1) multiplying the rescaled stressor (rescaled using only the 2013 data) by each habitat layer and the corresponding stressor/habitat vulnerability score (for each stressor this generates: 20 rasters); (2) summing the resulting stressor/habitat/vulnerability rasters (generates 1 raster for each stressor); (3) dividing by the number of habitats found in each raster cell layer. Benjamin Halpern, Melanie Frazier, John Potapenko, Kenneth Casey, Kellee Koenig, et al. 2015. Cumulative human impacts: pressure and cumulative impacts data (2013, all pressures). Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity. doi:10.5063/F15718ZN.