The Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS) team has been named among the four winners of the 2026 Ebbe Nielsen Challenge for its Species Distribution Models (SDMs), developed as part of the MPA Europe project.

The annual challenge, organised by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), recognises innovative uses of open biodiversity data. The 2026 edition attracted three times as many submissions as previous years, with entries from 31 countries across six continents. An international jury selected four winning projects, which will share the €20,000 prize pool.

The award-winning OBIS Species Distribution Models were developed by Silas C. Principe, Pieter Provoost and Ward Appeltans from the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO’s OBIS team. The models were initially created within MPA Europe to provide biodiversity information for identifying priority areas for marine protection.

The platform models the potential distributions of more than 12,000 marine species occurring in European waters. It combines species occurrence records from OBIS and GBIF with environmental information to estimate suitable areas at a spatial resolution of approximately 5 km. Users can explore present-day distributions and examine how suitable areas could shift under five future climate scenarios, including projections for the middle and end of this century.

The platform also makes the underlying information accessible for further research and planning. Users can compare modelling approaches and climate scenarios, assess model quality and uncertainty, and download maps and data for their own analyses. The outputs are openly available and designed to be transparent and reproducible.

“Delivering the OBIS Species Distribution Models was a team effort all the way,” the OBIS team said when the winners were announced, highlighting the importance of the thousands of data providers who make marine biodiversity records openly available through OBIS and GBIF.

For MPA Europe, these species distribution models provide an important scientific basis for understanding where marine biodiversity occurs today and how distributions may change as the climate changes. This information contributes to the project’s wider work to identify priority locations for networks of Marine Protected Areas across European seas.

Explore the MPA Europe map platform.