ArcGIS Living Atlas Blog

Did you know that Living Atlas Elevation Layers are updated quarterly with high-resolution elevation data from federal agencies, open sources, and the Community Maps Program? These updates are used within the Terrain, TopoBathy, and Basemap items, which improve your maps and visualizations of elevation across ArcGIS.

To see some of the newest lidar-derived updates for this release, check out this blog  by @RajinderNagi.

The National Land Cover Database (NLCD) has long been the standard for land cover mapping in the United States. This year, the USGS announced a major advancement in land cover mapping with the release of the Annual NLCD products. Harnessing the full Landsat data record, Annual NLCD provides a scientific suite of land cover data from 1985 to present. The data products are the result of a confluence of methodologies from past land cover projects together with modern innovations in geospatial deep learning technologies to create the next generation of land cover and land change information.

Esri and the ArcGIS Living Atlas team are providing accessibility to this data in the form of a ready-to-use imagery layer and a web mapping application, the NLCD Land Cover Explorer. Change analysis is essential to deriving information from a land cover time series. One of the foremost capabilities of this app is dynamic change analysis, providing dynamic visual and statistical change across annual slices of the NLCD Land Cover data archive.

To read the full guide, visit this blog by @RobertWaterman.

The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF)

A new ArcGIS Pro tool for downloading Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) data is now available in the ArcGIS Living Atlas! Providing access to a collection of over 3.1 billion species occurrence records contributed by over 2,500 publishing institutions, GBIF is the result of an intergovernmental initiative that hosts the largest collection of biodiversity information in the world. This new ArcGIS Pro download tool is aimed at providing researchers, educators, and decision makers with free and open access to occurrence and observation data for all types of life on planet Earth.

For more information about this tool, visit the detailed blog by @CraigMcCabe 

This year, Esri’s ArcGIS StoryMaps and Living Atlas teams are cohosting the 2025 ArcGIS StoryMaps Competition to share best practices and innovation in storytelling, cartography, and data visualization—and to help you elevate the challenges that mean the most to you.     

Read on for more competition details and resources to get started.

• What are the competition categories?
• Who can participate?
• What is ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World?
• What makes a winning story?
• Who are the guest judges this year?
• What’s the best place to start?

Competition closes December 12, 2025. 

Visit the 2025 ArcGIS StoryMaps Competition website to get started. We can’t wait to see what you create. 

Have you ever needed to perform a local water quality assessment?

Getting started with that process is now made easier by having the EPA Impaired Water Bodies dataset available in ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World.

Under Section 303(d) of the Clean Water Act, states and Tribes are required to assess and report water bodies that do not meet water quality standards. These hydrologic features are classified as impaired if they are affected by pollutants or conditions that limit their designated uses—such as drinking water supply, fish consumption, recreation, and more.

Each state or Tribe submits its assessments to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and in many cases, they also develop restoration plans that include Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs)—the maximum amount of a pollutant that a water body can receive while still meeting standards.

For the full blog by @GonzaloEspinoza-Davalos, visit this page. 

ProtectedSeas, a pioneering project committed to mapping and sharing global ocean protection data, is now part of ArcGIS Living Atlas. By providing detailed, standardized, and up-to-date information on marine protected areas and their regulations, ProtectedSeas empowers decision-makers, researchers, coastal communities, and advocates worldwide. 

ProtectedSeas’ data in the Living Atlas is already making a difference. Researchers are leveraging these layers to identify gaps in protection, assess compliance with international agreements, and track conservation outcomes. Coastal planners and local governments use the data to align development with ecological priorities. Educators bring the ocean to life in classrooms, and NGOs use the maps to engage the public and advocate for stronger protections.

For more information about the ProtectedSeas and their new Living Atlas layer, check out this blog by @KeithVanGraafeiland. 

Understanding how temperature and precipitation may change in the future is a key part of the Steps to Resilience and building more climate-smart communities. We are excited that NOAA has contributed the latest climate projections, LOCA2, to the Living Atlas that were developed for the 5th National Climate Assessment (NCA5).

Which climate data should you use?

This blog helps address when to use LOCA2, CHELSA, NCA5 Atlas, or Global Wet Bulb Temperature in your work. 

For the full blog by @DanPisut and @rantwerpen, click here. 

Understanding where and how fatal motor vehicle crashes occur is crucial to making roads safer, informing public policy, and supporting transportation planning. A new feature layer sourced from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) is now available in ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World, providing data on motor vehicle fatal crashes from 2019 through 2023, across the United States.

The FARS Fatal Motor Vehicle Crashes 2019 to 2023 layer, along with several web maps and an accompanying dashboard are all available in Living Atlas to help support the GIS community in advancing transportation safety toward the goal of zero motor vehicle deaths.

This goal, shared by Vision Zero and the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration’s Safe System Approach, acknowledges that while reaching zero deaths may be an ambitious goal, no loss of life on our roads is acceptable—and it is a collective effort to systematically eliminate traffic fatalities and serious injuries.

For more information about FARS and to learn how to use and access the content from Living Atlas, read the full blog by Steven Aviles here. 

Mangrove forests are among the most vital and dynamic ecosystems on our planet, providing critical habitat for wildlife, protecting coastlines, and playing an essential role in carbon sequestration. We are thrilled to share the news of an exciting addition to the ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World: the Global Mangrove Layer, contributed by NASA’s Carbon Monitoring System.

Layer: https://arcg.is/15Om4u0

NASA Metadata: https://doi.org/10.3334/ORNLDAAC/1665

Click here for the full blog by @KeithVanGraafeiland.

As climate change continues to worsen, rising temperatures lead to increased heat stress. This poses a risk to human health and may have significant social and economic consequences. A crucial metric to evaluate heat stress and its impact on human health is the wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT). This comprehensive heat stress metric considers not just temperature, but also humidity, wind, cloud cover, and solar radiation, providing a more accurate representation of the heat stress that individuals experience.

To effectively evaluate the risks and impacts of heat stress, having accurate and reliable projections is essential. However, projecting WBGT far into the future presents challenges. Fortunately, researchers at Purdue University have developed a new methodology that uses various climate models and scenarios to calculate WBGT projections. The research team has contributed their WBGT projections dataset to the Living Atlas, where it is now available to all!

For the full blog and detailed information about Wet Bulb Temperatures, visit this blog by @rantwerpen.