Frequently asked questions
Short answers about Biohotspot, its data and how to use it.
What is Biohotspot?
Biohotspot is a web app for marine planning. It puts ocean data for any coast or sea on one map, shows what lives in an area and which data is missing, tries different ways to protect it, and recommends a plan with a report. It works in four steps: See, Understand, Simulate and Advise, shown in the guide with a video walkthrough.
Do I need an account?
To open the map you enter your email; no password or code is needed, and we send you a welcome email. The open map layers can also be added to QGIS or ArcGIS with no sign-in and no key. Python scripts and AI agents need an API key, which you make yourself on the access page.
What areas does Biohotspot cover?
Any coast or sea in the world. There are more than 1,600 world map layers: tap anywhere on the sea and see which layers have data there. Exmouth Gulf in Western Australia is the example project, with full local planning data. The marine protected areas of Australia come from CAPAD 2024, with 5,337 areas.
Where does the data come from?
From national and global agencies and published research datasets. More than 300 world sources were each checked by hand in October 2026, and the data page lists each one with its licence where one is recorded. The Exmouth Gulf example uses the Oceanwise Australia Exmouth Gulf Spatial Database (November 2021), used with permission. The full list is on the data page.
What kinds of data are on the map?
Layers are sorted into five categories: Habitat, Biodiversity, Driver / Pressure, Ecosystem service and Protection. They include coral reefs, seagrass, mangroves, salt marsh, kelp, seabed type and depth, sea temperature and coral bleaching alerts, species ranges, fishing, shipping and other human uses. Many go back years, so you can see how a place has changed.
How is blue carbon estimated?
Tapping a spot gives the tonnes of carbon nearby. Mangrove soil carbon comes from Sanderman et al. (2018, CC0) and tidal marsh soil carbon from Maxwell et al. (2024, CC BY 4.0), both for the top metre of soil. Seagrass has no world carbon map, so Biohotspot multiplies the seagrass area by the IPCC default of 108 tonnes of carbon per hectare (2013 Wetlands Supplement) and shows it as a rough figure.
How does Biohotspot find ways to protect an area?
It runs Marxan, the standard open-source tool for marine park planning, on the project's own planning data. Press Run the options and Biohotspot tries 25 options in about a minute: protecting the area, leaving it open, or letting Marxan design the zones, at different targets. Each option shows which habitat targets it meets and what it costs other users of the sea. Every step is recorded, so anyone can rerun the result.
How does Biohotspot choose the recommended plan?
The Advise step recommends the best of the options you kept and explains why it beats the others. It also shows all options side by side, what is still missing, and the targets that apply to the area. Nothing is recommended when no option does better than the existing reserves.
How do I export a report?
Open Advise when it shows ready, then export the PDF report. From the same place you can save the scenario, copy a share link or email it. The guide shows each step.
Can I add my own data?
Yes. Set up your own project area, then add files or a download link under Uploads. You can upload GeoPackage, zipped Shapefile, GeoJSON, KML, GeoTIFF, or a CSV with latitude and longitude, up to 100 MB per file or 200 MB by link. Each file is checked against the data standards before it is used, and is shared with your team.
Who can see my project data?
A project's own data is seen by its team: the owner and the people the project is shared with. The team is recognised by the email address each person signs in with. If the owner makes the project public, anyone can open it but sees only the uploads in use that have an open licence; restricted data, or data whose licence is marked Not sure, is only shown to the team. Heritage data and Indigenous land and sea data are only shown to the team whatever the licence, following the CARE principles.
Can I use Biohotspot data in QGIS, ArcGIS or Python?
Yes. One web address, https://biohotspot.ai4wa.com/ogc, serves every open vector layer as an OGC API for QGIS and ArcGIS, with no sign-in. Raster layers come as XYZ tiles. For code there is a REST API and a Python client that needs only requests; both use an API key. The steps are on the access page.
Can I use Biohotspot with ChatGPT or Claude?
Yes. Biohotspot has an MCP server that ChatGPT, Claude, GitHub Copilot, Cursor and other agents can connect to with your API key. It gives the agent 11 tools to look at places, check an area, run the options, find layers, search the papers, and read or add data to your projects. Set-up steps for each tool are on the access page.
What is in the research library?
More than 5,200 papers and reports: more than 4,500 on coastal ecosystems around the world, and the Exmouth Gulf reference library from Oceanwise Australia. Most link to their DOI, and you can search them by words. When you check an area, Biohotspot lists research papers on the habitats it finds. Browse it in the research library.
Who built Biohotspot?
Three teams in Western Australia. Oceanwise Australia, a marine and coastal science consultancy, built the first example project, Exmouth Gulf. NTLP, the UWA Centre for Natural and Technical Language Processing, builds and runs Biohotspot. AI4WA turns the centre's research into tools for Western Australian industry and designs Biohotspot's calculations with the people who use them.