Within the project The Changing Arctic Transpolar System (CATS) we compiled macrobenthic community data from previously conducted ship expeditions into the Arctic Ocean. These data were cleaned and harmonized and comprise 1500 different taxa in 363 sampling points in the Eurasian Arctic covering marine regions from the Barents Sea to the East Siberian Sea. Furthermore, we acquired data on 12 different environmental variables fitting to the sampling locations from the biotic data.

1: For estimating the organic carbon flux to the seafloor, using the empirical function proposed by Suess (1980), data on primary production were taken from the Ocean Productivity website of Oregon State University (http://www.science.oregonstate.edu/ocean.productivity/) and compiled using a Carbon-based Productivity Model by Behrenfeld et al. (2005).

Supplement to: Hansen, Miriam Lea Sarah; Piepenburg, Dieter; Pantiukhin, Dmitrii; Kraan, Casper (2020): Unraveling the effects of environmental drivers and spatial structure on benthic species distribution patterns in Eurasian-Arctic seas (Barents, Kara and Laptev Seas). Polar Biology, 43(11), 1693-1705