What Atlas is, and why it is more than a mangrove map
Atlas is a nature and climate intelligence platform for Africa. Blue carbon is the flagship, and the same platform carries themes from infrastructure to water, wildlife and communities.
Short answer: no. Atlas begins with blue carbon, the carbon held by coastal ecosystems such as mangroves, because that is where good evidence is most urgently needed and where Atlas holds its deepest data. But the platform underneath is general: it collects place-based evidence, archives it with checksums, harmonises units and coordinates, analyses it, and explains it with maps, charts, reports and an AI analyst.
What is in it today
- Mangrove extent and change for the African countries mapped by Global Mangrove Watch, 1996 to 2025.
- Species, field plots, restoration sites and sea-turtle tracks for parts of Kenya's coast.
- Themed layers from WWF Kenya Sources and partners: infrastructure, water, protected areas, people and settlements, wildlife, fire and climate, farming, mining licences, surveys, land use and boundaries.
- A register of carbon-credit projects across Africa, the organisations behind them and how communities are involved.
- Scenarios, hot-spot statistics, distance analysis, reports and an AI analyst.
What it is built to become. Seagrass and salt-marsh maps, community projects, climate-risk layers, alerts, a data service for institutions and national editions are planned. The same register and engine can follow forestry, farming and rangeland projects as readily as mangrove ones.
Why one platform. Real decisions are not made about one layer. A planner asks what lies near a mangrove forest, who works there, what the community depends on and what a project would change. Atlas keeps those answers together and traceable.
Related reading
More in Knowledge Base
- What mangroves do for people (ecosystem services)
- Measurement, reporting and verification (MRV)
- Global Mangrove Watch: version 3 and version 4 explained
- Seagrass meadows: blue carbon's quiet partner
- Mangrove zonation: why different species grow in bands
- East African and Indian Ocean mangroves
- Scenarios are not forecasts
- East African coastal forests
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