The General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO) consists of an international group of experts who work on the development of a range of bathymetric data sets and products. GEBCO operates under the joint auspices of the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) and the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO. See our web site for more information about GEBCO at http://www.gebco.net/.

The layer included in this WMS are based on the GEBCO_2014 Grid. The data set was originally published in 2014, last updated in April 2015. Please note the data set has now been superseded by a later version. Further information about GEBCO's products can be found on GEBCO's web site: www.gebco.net.

The bathymetric portion of the GEBCO_2014 Grid was largely generated from a database of ship-track soundings with interpolation between soundings guided by satellite-derived gravity data. However, in areas where they improve on the existing GEBCO Grid, data sets generated by other methods have been included. Further information about the data sets included in the grid can be found in the documentation that accompanies the data set and is available from https://www.gebco.net/data_and_products/historical_data_sets/#gebco_2014.

Within the GEBCO_2014 Grid, the area south of 60S is based on the International Bathymetric Chart of the Southern Ocean (IBCSO) v1 www.ibcso.org. The imagery for land areas in this WMS, north of 60 degrees south, is largely taken from the NASA Blue Marble: Next Generation data set, produced by Reto Stockli, NASA Earth Observatory, the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/BlueMarble). For land areas south of 60 degrees south, coastline and ice shelf information is taken from the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) Antarctic Digital Database coastline dataset (www.add.scar.org/Information).

Details on how to download the GEBCO Grid can be found at https://www.gebco.net/data_and_products/gridded_bathymetry_data/. This WMS delivers imagery in a polar view centred on the South Pole. Separate WMS's provided global imagery for the GEBCO Grid and imagery centred on the North Pole.

Please note that the GEBCO Grid is mainly a deeper water data set and does not contain detailed bathymetry in shallower water areas. This WMS has been developed by the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) on behalf of the GEBCO community. If imagery from this WMS is included in web sites, reports and digital and printed imagery then we request that the source of the dataset is acknowledged and be of the form 'Imagery reproduced from the GEBCO Grid, version xxxxxx, www.gebco.net'. Where 'version xxxxxx' is the appropriate version number of the GEBCO Grid, given in the layer information below. Also included in this WMS is a layer based on the GEBCO_08, Grid gebco_08_grid_south_polar_view.