FAQs

Frequently Asked Questions

How are political regions determined?

Political regions in ThermoGlobe are determined using the Marine and Land Zones shapefile which is freely available at marineregions.org. It was created by the Flanders Marine Institute using the union of the ESRI world country database adn the EEZ V11 dataset.

If necessary for your work, the preferred citation for this data is:

Flanders Marine Institute (2020). Union of the ESRI Country shapefile and the Exclusive Economic Zones (version 3). Available online at https://www.marineregions.org/https://doi.org/10.14284/403.


How do you calculate the seas and oceans?

Sea and ocean names in ThermoGlobe are calculated from reported site locations using the IHO Sea Areas, version 3 shapefile which was downloaded from marineregions.org in August of 2019. 

The source for the boundaries is the publication 'Limits of Oceans & Seas, Special Publication No. 23' published by the IHO in 1953. The dataset was composed by the Flanders Marine Data and Information Centre.

The preferred citation for this dataset is:

Flanders Marine Institute (2018). IHO Sea Areas, version 3. Available online at https://www.marineregions.org/https://doi.org/10.14284/323.