What Biohotspot does

A free web app for marine planning, on ocean data for any coast or sea. Each page below covers one task.

• Reserve design

  Run Marxan online for marine reserve design

  Biohotspot runs Marxan, the open-source reserve design tool, in the browser: choose an area, run the options in about a minute, and get each option's habitat targets met, its cost to other sea users and a recommended plan with a PDF report.

• Gap analysis

  Marine protected area gap analysis

  Draw an area and Biohotspot lists the habitats inside it, how much of each, what is already protected, and how far each habitat is from its protection target, with the uses of the sea it overlaps and the data that is missing.

• Blue carbon

  Blue carbon estimates for mangroves, tidal marsh and seagrass

  Tap a spot on the Biohotspot map for the tonnes of carbon nearby: mangrove soil carbon (Sanderman et al. 2018), tidal marsh soil carbon (Maxwell et al. 2024) and a rough seagrass figure from the IPCC default of 108 tonnes per hectare.

• Data access

  Marine and coastal data for QGIS, ArcGIS, Python and AI agents

  One OGC API address serves every open Biohotspot vector layer to QGIS and ArcGIS with no sign-in; a REST API, a Python client and an MCP server with 12 tools give scripts and AI agents the same data, with a sign-in or a personal API key.