Recent News

Changes in marine biodiversity—the variety and variability of life in the ocean—can be an early indicator of change, provided it’s noticed. Read more here.

One priority for MBON is to advance global interoperability and use of standards for a minimum set of observations (Essential Ocean Variables and Essential Biodiversity Variables) through broad partnerships. On June 19, Frank Muller-Karger and Gabrielle Canonico spoke about this effort during a “Monitoring Essential Variables” panel during the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) Virtual Symposium 2020.

Join U.S. Marine Biodiversity Observation Network (MBON) partners as they deliver insightful discussions on how to conserve biodiversity and work toward global best practices for biodiversity monitoring and data sharing. Read more here.

MBON, NERRS and NASA team develops automated, satellite-based method to evaluate damage caused by hurricanes and severe storms in coastal areas. Read more here.

US and global MBON partnered with US IOOS, NOAA’s Oceanic and Atmospheric Research Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML), and NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) to develop and routinely generate MBON Seascapes products and make them available on NOAA CoastWatch.

On September 9, Enrique Montes, University of South Florida, presented on the tremendous progress of the MBON Pole to Pole network in the Americas region. The talk, titled “A Marine Biodiversity Observation Network Pole-to-Pole of the Americas in support of conservation and sustainable use of living resources in the sea” was recorded and is available here.

New tools were developed by partners of the Sanctuaries MBON team in Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary to investigate the relationships between the ocean environment and animal communities of the Sanctuary, and to convey this information to a variety of users.

Marine foundation species like giant kelp, seagrass, and corals, harbor great reservoirs of biodiversity in coastal oceans. Now the Santa Barbara Channel MBON team, supported in part by NOAA, has shown the extent to which one of these species, giant kelp, supports coastal ecosystems.

Central to the US MBON is the development of new and innovative means to assess marine biodiversity. The MBON community has made significant advances in molecular eDNA techniques to evaluate taxa diversity - from microbes to whales - in highly contrasting ecosystems such as the Florida Keys and Monterey Bay in California.

The Marine Biodiversity Observation Network (MBON) of the Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON), the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR), and the SCAR Antarctic Biodiversity Portal share a common vision on the building and coordination of a global ocean biodiversity observation system.