Data access
Ocean data in QGIS, ArcGIS, Python and your AI agent
Biohotspot's open map layers can be used outside the map: in QGIS or ArcGIS with no sign-in, and from Python or an AI agent with a personal API key.
QGIS and ArcGIS
One web address, https://biohotspot.ai4wa.com/ogc, serves every open vector layer as an OGC API – Features service, with no sign-in and no key. Raster layers come as XYZ tiles.
Python and REST
A REST API and a Python client that needs only requests, both with an API key you make yourself on the access page.
ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot and Cursor
Biohotspot has an MCP server that AI agents connect to: ChatGPT and Claude with your Biohotspot sign-in, other agents with an API key. It gives them 12 tools: look at a place, check an area against its targets, run the options, find layers and read their features, get an Australian marine park's facts, search the research papers, and read or add data to your projects.
What is in it
More than 1,600 world map layers, the marine protected areas of Australia (CAPAD 2024), and a research library of more than 5,200 papers and reports. Open-licence datasets each have a page among the open datasets.
More of what Biohotspot does
- 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.