Hosted by: HUB Ocean & Uppsala University

Seagrass meadows are vital ecosystems, supporting biodiversity, improving water quality, protecting coastlines, and capturing carbon. Yet despite their importance, we still lack accurate data on their distribution, cover, biomass, and other key attributes. Collecting and compiling this data is inherently challenging—especially in turbid or deeper waters—and what exists remains fragmented across institutions, geographies, and formats, or is still missing altogether.

In this webinar, we explore how combining seagrass datasets from many sources on a cloud based geospatial platform can help create a more complete and usable picture of seagrass—from local to global scales.

Introduction talk by Lina Mtwana Nordlund, Associate Professor of Environmental Science at Uppsala University, global co-lead for the Seagrass Essential Ocean Variable (EOV) under the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS, IOC-UNESCO), and contributor to key global initiatives, including the World Ocean Assessment and the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (Vision 2030), will share insights on  monitoring seagrass, and current global efforts to improve access to seagrass data.

This will be followed by a live demonstration of the Ocean Data Platform, showing how seagrass maps can be brought together, explored, combined, and contributed to in one place. We will put ODP to work during the webinar by combining some of the data sources mentioned in the introduction talk to inspire how data global and local scales can co-exist.

We’ll close with an open discussion on the challenges and opportunities of building a more connected seagrass data ecosystem. What data would you like to see on ODP?

What we will cover

·       Introduction to Seagrass monitoring, local to global

·       Introduction to HUB Ocean’s Ocean Data Platform

·       Live demonstration of seagrass data layers

·       How to access, combine, and contribute seagrass data

·       Open Q&A

SPEAKERS

Lina Mtwana Nordlund, Uppsala University, GOOS/IOC-UNESCO, UN Ocean Decade; Gustav Kågesten, Science Director, HUB Ocean and Brian Free, Geospatial Data Analyst, HUB Ocean

Who should join

This session is open to anyone working with seagrass science, conservation and data, including marine researchers, seagrass managers, NGOs, policy makers and ocean data practitioners.

About the hosts

HUB Ocean is building the Ocean Data Platform aggregating, standardizing and making accessible ocean datasets from partners around the world — accelerating science, conservation and sustainable ocean management. [hubocean.earth →]

This webinar is part of HUB Ocean's 2026 ocean ecosystem webinar series, exploring the science, data and policy dimensions of the ocean's most critical habitats.