S-Oases

An open-source database on the environmental and cultural state and future development of oases

We are creating an open-source database (S-Oases: Senckenberg Oases database) on oases with extensive bibliographical research. The goal is to delineate oases, study the biocultural diversity and create an open source database to allow every researcher to obtain information about those special ecosystems.

A total of 5,500 scientific paper has been reviewed looking for oases coordinates. In total, S-Oases database includes until now a total of 1,657 different scientific papers of whom information about the geological, biological and cultural information provided in the papers were annotated. With this information we will be able to characterize which are the best oases predictors, to be able to establish which are the human uses and species on oases and to create a global map of oases. Our row material to build this map are the coordinates of the oases found in our bibliographic research.

Up to now a total of 1,344 different oases has been incorporated to our database. Only considering the species found cited in the papers incorporated in our database, 1,861 different species have been reported living on oases, but this number increases up to 10,000 species considering other data sources. In countries with drylands, up to 15% of the total population is living nowadays on oases, up to 224 million people only in Middle East and African countries.

Participate

Do you want to help the S-Oases database grow? You can help us to complement our database with location of oases around the world. If you know the name of an oasis and you can locate it in the map, you can help us to make the map bigger. Please feel free to add any useful information you can give us here.