The GCDC is a quality assured subject based knowledge repository focused on global change data produced by the earth and environmental science community of South Africa. 

Global Change refers to any long-term pattern or trend that could amplifying existing or create new risks. This includes climate change, urbanisation, and increasing disease burden for example. 

The repository publishes collections and subsets of spatially referenced global change datasets hosted on the SAEON Open Data Platform.

The GCDC is not only for experts; any user can freely browse the data. The GCDC provides a consistent and harmonised way of exploring quality-controlled data, from a large variety of by data providers and formal sources.