The Nature Conservancy has a great gallery of interactive maps portraying a large variety of conservation data. Some of the maps are tied to small regions and very specific projects while other maps are more global in scope. The Global Conservation Maps cover the largest variety of datasets and regions.

The Global Conservation Maps can be used to view data representations for marine, freshwater, and terrestrial ecosystems. To view the datasets on a map, select a base layer then choose a dataset from the drop down menu for that base map. For example, the screen image below is of a map representing the number of freshwater fish species in Africa.

Applications for Education
The Global Conservation Maps could be useful for students to use to examine conservation data by ecosystem and region. All of the data associated with the Global Conservation Maps can be downloaded for re-use in Google Maps, Google Earth, and GeoCommons. By downloading the data sets your students can create their own maps to show correlations and comparisons.

H/T to Google Maps Mania.