Examples of How SWOT Database has been used for Research and Conservation
The sea turtle data that are housed within the global SWOT database have been made publicly available by the original data contributors and by the SWOT Program both for educational purposes and for facilitation of an exchange among sea turtle researchers and conservationists. The data are protected by SWOT’s terms of use, but anyone may request to use the data by following a simple request process.
Information from the SWOT database has been requested more than 100 times and is used in a variety of projects that aim to advance sea turtle research and conservation worldwide. Users have ranged from researchers conducting peer-reviewed scientific studies and using spatial planning applications, to students learning to make maps in university geographic information system (GIS) classes, to elementary schoolchildren learning about sea turtles. Next are some products that have benefited from SWOT’s global sea turtle database. If you have ideas about how SWOT data could be put to use for sea turtle research and conservation, visit https://www.seaturtlestatus.org/request-data/ today and let us know!
From Mazaris, A. D., V. Almpanidou, B. P. Wallace, J. D. Pantis, and G. Schofield. 2014. A global gap analysis of sea turtle protection coverage. Biological Conservation 173: 17–23.
From Almpanidou, V., G. Schofield, A. S. Kallimanis, O. Türkozan, G. C. Hays, and A. D. Mazaris. 2016. Using climatic suitability thresholds to identify past, present and future population viability. Ecological Indicators 71: 551–556.
From Wallace, B. P., et al. 2010. Regional Management Units for marine turtles: A novel framework for prioritizing conservation and research across multiple scales. PLoS ONE 5 (12): e15465.
From Pike, D. A. 2013. Climate influences the global distribution of sea turtle nesting. Global Ecology and Biogeography 22: 555–556.
This article originally appeared in SWOT Report, vol. 14 (2019). Click here to download the complete article as a PDF.