The method at work, one field at a time.
Each atlas applies COMPASS ID to a whole family or domain: classifying its literature, geocoding its study sites, and revealing where research is thick, where it is absent, and how it lines up against real-world need. All are open and interactive.
Geolocated study sites
One of the two largest families of flowering plants, every species of it CITES-listed. Its indexed research concentrates on a few cultivated and medicinal genera; three quarters of the 31,892 accepted species have no indexed paper.
Geolocated study sites
The dogbane family gave medicine vincristine and reserpine. Yet across the species we censused, most have no indexed research at all.
Geolocated study sites
The Brazil-nut family (Lecythidaceae) underpins livelihoods and non-timber forest economies across the Amazon basin. This atlas maps the ecology, trade and communities behind it, and where the science thins out.
Geolocated study sites
Land degradation, drought, and desertification threaten the world’s drylands and the people who depend on them. This atlas classifies the literature across environmental, socioeconomic, and policy dimensions.
Geolocated study sites
10,803 of the 14,400 accepted species in the fourth largest plant family have no indexed paper. One genus, Coffea, holds 34.6 percent of the research, and 74 of its own 134 accepted species have none.
Geolocated study sites
All 45 accepted cat species have indexed research, and five of them account for 8,853 of the 18,019 indexed studies. The atlas measures that concentration, sets research effort against Red List category, and recovers the studies that name a cat only by its common name.
Geolocated study sites
Fungi are a vast, essential kingdom, central to soils, forests, food and medicine, and remain thinly studied relative to their diversity. This atlas maps the fungal literature to show how much of the kingdom is still a blank space.
Geolocated study sites
The only continent run entirely by treaty. This atlas maps the indexed science of ice, climate, and Antarctic life against the Antarctic Treaty System, the Madrid Protocol and CCAMLR, and shows how little of it engages the governance system that actually runs the continent.
These atlases are beta releases built on a partial corpus. A blank region means “no indexed study found,” not “no research exists.” We publish our methods and measured accuracy openly.
How the method works →Reports
Reports are written analyses of the atlas data on one question, prepared for policy meetings and for citation. Each report has a version number and a date, and its figures are the values measured on that date; the atlases show the current values.
39,052 accepted species in Orchidaceae, Apocynaceae and Lecythidaceae, assessed against Targets 4, 20 and 21 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
29,018 of the 39,052 species (74.3 percent) have no paper in the indexed literature whose title or abstract names the species or one of its checklist synonyms.
From the series Research coverage of the world’s vascular plants, 2026 to 2030. Prepared for the seventeenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, Yerevan, 19 to 30 October 2026. Version 1.0, released 16 October 2026.
More research atlases are on the way
We are building atlases across new families, taxa, regions, and themes, and we prioritize them by real demand. Are you an organization or researcher who wants an evidence atlas for your field, species group, or region? Tell us what you would map, and we will see if we can build it.