C5.36: GIS database of vectorial and raster maps freely available at the European extent

EDIT geoplatform (http://edit.csic.es/GISdownloads.html) provides standard GIS layers of surface units (countries, squares, ...) to evaluate the spatial distribution of occurrence data -spatial completeness-, and standard GIS layers of environmental variables (climate, topography,...) to evaluate weather occurrence data represent adequately the gradients of environmental variation -environmental completeness-.
GIS layers of surface units include both administrative units (countries, provinces) and regular equal-area units of different sizes (UTM squares, latitudinal squares, icosahedric triangles). Administrative units exist only for terrestrial areas, while regular equal-area units cover both terrestrial and marine areas. GIS layers of regular equal-area units were elaborated by MNCN-CSIC (EDIT geoplatform, 2007), with the exception of the UTM squares of 2,500 Km2 elaborated by the European Environmental Agency (EEA, 2003).
GIS layers of environmental variables cover the main environmental issues: climate, topography, vegetation, land cover and human population. Climate data include around twenty variables (temperature, precipitation, seasonality, etc.) from Worldclim database. Topography data include elevation above sea level from Worldclim database, combined bathymetry and topography from NOAA-NGDC ETOPO2v2 database, and distance to coast in Km, elaborated by MNCN-CSIC (EDIT geoplatform, 2007). Vegetation data include maps of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) obtained from satellite images by NASA and processed at Clark Labs. Land cover data include the map of land cover categories for the world generated by the University of Maryland, Department of Geography (Global Landcover Facility), and the map of land cover categories for Europe generated by the European Commission Joint Research Centre (Global Land Cover 2000 database).
It’s possible to use different geographical extents, from the whole Earth to a selected country or region within Europe. As spatial extent is reduced / increased, analyses can be done with more / less detailed spatial resolutions.
GIS layers in the EDIT geoplatform are all in geodetic coordinates (longitude, latitude), datum WGS84.
A more detailed description of the GIS layers of surface units and environmental variables can be found at http://edit.csic.es/web/docs/EDIT_GIS_layers.rtf