Marine Sensitivity Toolkit

Quantifying ecological sensitivity to offshore energy development across the U.S. continental shelf

Explore the Data

Composite Scores

Interactive map of composite sensitivity scores across Program Areas

Species Distributions

Individual species distribution models, habitat suitability, and extinction risk

Documentation

Technical methods, data sources, and workflow notebooks

Methodology Overview

The Marine Sensitivity Toolkit integrates species distribution models, extinction risk scores, and cumulative impact layers to produce composite sensitivity surfaces for offshore energy planning areas. The framework synthesizes data from NOAA, USFWS, IUCN, and academic sources to support evidence-based decision making under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act.

Overview of the marine sensitivity methodology

About

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is mandated under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) to balance energy development with environmental protection. The Marine Sensitivity Toolkit provides spatially explicit, species-level sensitivity metrics to inform leasing decisions and environmental reviews across the National OCS Program.

Fish & Invertebrates

Marine Mammals

Seabirds

Ocean Productivity

Version History

v3

February 2026 – present

Program Areas for the National OCS Plan. Ecoregion rescaling. Seven source datasets merged (AquaMaps, NOAA CetMap, Duke OBIS-SEAMAP, NOAA NCCOS, BOEM-NCCOS, Marine-Life Data & Analysis Team, Map of Biodiversity Importance). ESA, MMPA, MBTA, and IUCN extinction risk scoring.

v2

January 2026

Transition to Program Areas (2026). Individual model layers. Model merging pipeline. Cloud-optimized GeoTIFF storage.

v1

September 2023 – December 2025

Planning Areas across U.S. EEZ. AquaMaps-based species distributions. Flower plots for multi-taxa visualization. Species tables with conservation status.