# Biohotspot

> Biohotspot (https://biohotspot.ai4wa.com) is a free 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. Built in Western Australia by Oceanwise Australia, the UWA NTLP centre and AI4WA.

It works in four steps:

1. See: tap any sea, or draw an area, and every map layer with data there is listed, sorted into habitat, biodiversity, pressures, ecosystem services and protection.
2. Understand: which habitats an area holds, how much of each, how far they are from their protection targets, who uses the area, and which data is missing.
3. Simulate: about 20 ways to protect the area, found with the Marxan optimiser, each showing which habitats it protects and who loses out.
4. Advise: the best option and why, all options side by side, and a PDF report with a link to share.

## What data it has

- 1,600+ world map layers: 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.
- Marine protected areas of Australia (CAPAD 2024, 5,337 areas, CC BY 4.0).
- Blue carbon: soil carbon in mangroves (Sanderman et al. 2018, CC0) and tidal marshes (Maxwell et al. 2024, CC BY 4.0), and a rough seagrass estimate from the IPCC default of 108 tonnes of carbon per hectare. Tapping a spot gives tonnes of carbon nearby.
- An example project, Exmouth Gulf in Western Australia, with full local planning data.
- A research library of about 5,200 papers and reports: Exmouth Gulf, and coastal ecosystems around the world. Most link to their DOI.
- Every dataset shows its source, year and licence. Open-licence datasets each have a page under https://biohotspot.ai4wa.com/data/sources.

Every marine park and open dataset fact on the site, as plain text with its source and licence: https://biohotspot.ai4wa.com/llms-full.txt

## Pages

- [Home](https://biohotspot.ai4wa.com/): what Biohotspot does
- [Ocean map](https://biohotspot.ai4wa.com/workspace): the map; tap any sea
- [What it does](https://biohotspot.ai4wa.com/tools): one page per task: [Marxan reserve design online](https://biohotspot.ai4wa.com/tools/marxan-online), [marine protected area gap analysis](https://biohotspot.ai4wa.com/tools/mpa-gap-analysis), [blue carbon estimates](https://biohotspot.ai4wa.com/tools/blue-carbon), [data for QGIS, ArcGIS, Python and AI agents](https://biohotspot.ai4wa.com/tools/marine-data-gis-api)
- [Guide](https://biohotspot.ai4wa.com/guide): the four steps, with a two-minute video
- [Data sources](https://biohotspot.ai4wa.com/data): where the data comes from
- [Open datasets](https://biohotspot.ai4wa.com/data/sources): a page per open-licence marine and coastal dataset in the source catalogue (habitats, biodiversity, pressures), with its publisher, licence, coverage, files, citation and any Biohotspot map layers
- [Research library](https://biohotspot.ai4wa.com/library): papers and reports
- [Australian marine parks](https://biohotspot.ai4wa.com/places/mpa): a page per marine park in CAPAD 2024 with enough open data (area, zones, IUCN categories, habitats, blue carbon, pressures), every figure with its source and licence, grouped by state with a page per state where at least 3 parks qualify
- [Use it from your own tools](https://biohotspot.ai4wa.com/access): OGC API, REST API, Python client, MCP
- [FAQ](https://biohotspot.ai4wa.com/faq): short answers on the data, coverage, blue carbon, reports, access and who built it
- [Privacy](https://biohotspot.ai4wa.com/privacy): what the site collects, who it is shared with, where it is kept, for how long, and how to have it deleted
- [Terms of use](https://biohotspot.ai4wa.com/terms): the terms for using the site, its API, OGC service and MCP server, and its data

## Ways in for software

- OGC API Features (QGIS, ArcGIS): https://biohotspot.ai4wa.com/ogc
- REST API with personal keys (docs at https://biohotspot.ai4wa.com/swagger after signing in)
- Python client: https://biohotspot.ai4wa.com/access/biohotspot.py
- MCP server for AI assistants (Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor): https://biohotspot.ai4wa.com/mcp: ChatGPT and Claude connect with OAuth (sign in to Biohotspot); other clients send an API key from https://biohotspot.ai4wa.com/access#keys. Tools: look_here, look_in_area, understand_area, simulate, find_layers, get_features, get_marine_park, search_papers, list_projects, get_project, list_project_data, add_project_data.