Coral reefs are threatened by human activities on both the land (e.g., deforestation) and the sea (e.g., overfishing). Most conservation planning for coral reefs focuses on removing threats in the ...sea, neglecting management actions on the land. A more integrated approach to coral reef conservation, inclusive of land-sea connections, requires an understanding of how and where terrestrial conservation actions influence reefs. We address this by developing a land-sea planning approach to inform fine-scale spatial management decisions and test it in Fiji. Our aim is to determine where the protection of forest can deliver the greatest return on investment for coral reef ecosystems. To assess the benefits of conservation to coral reefs, we estimate their relative condition as influenced by watershed-based pollution and fishing. We calculate the cost-effectiveness of protecting forest and find that investments deliver rapidly diminishing returns for improvements to relative reef condition. For example, protecting 2% of forest in one area is almost 500 times more beneficial than protecting 2% in another area, making prioritization essential. For the scenarios evaluated, relative coral reef condition could be improved by 8-58% if all remnant forest in Fiji were protected rather than deforested. Finally, we determine the priority of each coral reef for implementing a marine protected area when all remnant forest is protected for conservation. The general results will support decisions made by the Fiji Protected Area Committee as they establish a national protected area network that aims to protect 20% of the land and 30% of the inshore waters by 2020. Although challenges remain, we can inform conservation decisions around the globe by tackling the complex issues relevant to integrated land-sea planning.
Conservation planners must reconcile trade-offs associated with using biodiversity data of differing qualities to make decisions. Coarse habitat classifications are commonly used as surrogates to ...design marine reserve networks when fine-scale biodiversity data are incomplete or unavailable. Although finely-classified habitat maps provide more detail, they may have more misclassification errors, a common problem when remotely-sensed imagery is used. Despite these issues, planners rarely consider the effects of errors when choosing data for spatially explicit conservation prioritizations. Here we evaluate trade-offs between accuracy and resolution of hierarchical coral reef habitat data (geomorphology and benthic substrate) derived from remote sensing, in spatial planning for Kubulau District, Fiji. For both, we use accuracy information describing the probability that a mapped habitat classification is correct to design marine reserve networks that achieve habitat conservation targets, and demonstrate inadequacies of using habitat maps without accuracy data. We show that using more detailed habitat information ensures better representation of biogenic habitats (i.e. coral and seagrass), but leads to larger and more costly reserves, because these data have more misclassification errors, and are also more expensive to obtain. Reduced impacts on fishers are possible using coarsely-classified data, which are also more cost-effective for planning reserves if we account for data collection costs, but using these data may under-represent reef habitats that are important for fisheries and biodiversity, due to the maps low thematic resolution. Finally, we show that explicitly accounting for accuracy information in decisions maximizes the chance of successful conservation outcomes by reducing the risk of missing conservation representation targets, particularly when using finely classified data.
•We evaluate spatial planning trade-offs from using coral reef habitat data of differing accuracy.•We compare reserves designed using high accuracy geomorphology vs finer detail benthic substrate.•Accounting for mapping accuracy reduces the risk of missing conservation targets.•Using fine habitat classifications with low accuracy leads to larger and more costly reserves.•Coarse classifications are most cost-effective with low data costs and reduced impacts on fishers.
Pollution from land‐based run‐off threatens coastal ecosystems and the services they provide, detrimentally affecting the livelihoods of millions people on the world's coasts. Planning for linkages ...among terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems can help managers mitigate the impacts of land‐use change on water quality and coastal ecosystem services.
We examine the approaches used for land‐sea planning, with particular focus on the models currently used to estimate the impacts of land‐use change on water quality and fisheries. Our findings could also be applied to other ecosystem services. This Review encompasses modelling of: large scale drivers of land‐use change; local activities that cause such change; run‐off, dispersal and transformation of pollutants in the coastal ocean; ecological responses to pollutants; socio‐economic responses to ecological change; and finally, the design of a planning response.
We find that there is a disconnect between the dynamical models that can be used to link land to sea processes and the simple tools that are typically used to inform planning. This disconnect may weaken the robustness of plans to manage dynamic processes. Land‐sea planning is highly interdisciplinary, making the development of effective plans a challenge for small teams of managers and decision makers.
Synthesis and applications. We propose some guiding principles for where and how dynamic land‐sea connections can most effectively be built into planning tools. Tools that can capture pertinent processes are needed, but they must be simple enough to be implemented in regions with limited resources for collecting data, developing models and developing integrated land‐sea plans.
We propose some guiding principles for where and how dynamic land‐sea connections can most effectively be built into planning tools. Tools that can capture pertinent processes are needed, but they must be simple enough to be implemented in regions with limited resources for collecting data, developing models and developing integrated land‐sea plans.
Project prioritization protocols are an important tool for allocating conservation resources efficiently, and have been applied to a range of species and ecosystems. Current approaches are inadequate ...when applied to species with distinct threats impacting different and/or multiple life history stages, such as sea turtles. We develop a model that integrates the benefit of any management project on a population by way of its expected population growth rate, including projects targeting different and/or multiple life history stages. To illustrate its utility, we prioritize projects for investment relevant to Australia's eastern population of Flatback turtle (Natator depressus). We rely upon expert‐elicitation to estimate individual benefit parameters, feasibility, and cost, and calculate the cost‐effectiveness of each project. The most cost‐effective project was not the most feasible, cheapest, or most beneficial. Our approach will help managers make efficient decisions that account for the full range of threats operating on a population.
Carbon finance offers the potential to change land management and conservation planning priorities. We develop a novel approach to planning for improved land management to conserve biodiversity while ...utilizing potential revenue from carbon biosequestration. We apply our approach in northern Australia's tropical savanna, a region of global significance for biodiversity and carbon storage, both of which are threatened by current fire and grazing regimes. Our approach aims to identify priority locations for protecting species and vegetation communities by retaining existing vegetation and managing fire and grazing regimes at a minimum cost. We explore the impact of accounting for potential carbon revenue (using a carbon price of US$14 per tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent) on priority areas for conservation and the impact of explicitly protecting carbon stocks in addition to biodiversity. Our results show that improved management can potentially raise approximately US$5 per hectare per year in carbon revenue and prevent the release of 1-2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent over approximately 90 years. This revenue could be used to reduce the costs of improved land management by three quarters or double the number of biodiversity targets achieved and meet carbon storage targets for the same cost. These results are based on generalised cost and carbon data; more comprehensive applications will rely on fine scale, site-specific data and a supportive policy environment. Our research illustrates that the duel objective of conserving biodiversity and reducing the release of greenhouse gases offers important opportunities for cost-effective land management investments.
•We present the first test of the landscape species approach.•We test whether landscape species are effective surrogates for biodiversity.•Landscape species are the worst surrogates of all species ...groups tested.•Prioritising for randomly selected species gives better surrogacy performance.•Landscape species approach should be used with more robust planning approaches.
Given the limited funds available, spatial prioritisation is necessary to help decide when and where to undertake conservation. One method for setting local scale priorities for conservation action is the landscape species approach which aims to identify priorities based on the needs of a small number of wide ranging species with large environmental impacts. Despite being used for the past decade by conservation organisations such as Wildlife Conservation Society, the effectiveness of the approach for representing a more comprehensive range of biodiversity has never been evaluated. Here we compare conservation priorities identified using a suite of landscape species (n=13) against those using many alternative sets of threatened or endemic species (n=7–88) to assess the applicability and suitability of the landscape species approach in a biologically diverse landscape (Greater Virunga Landscape, Uganda, Rwanda, and Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa). We defined the minimum area needed to conserve each species on the basis of the species’ range size. We found that prioritising for landscape species adequately conserves only 31 (35%) species, whereas prioritising for an equal number of endemic species, threatened species, or randomly sampled species adequately conserves 74%, 69% and 42% of species, respectively. We also found that prioritising for one taxonomic group (birds or plants) alone resulted in better surrogacy performance than the Landscape Species. These results question the underlying assumption of the landscape species approach, that managing threats to Landscape Species will also manage threats to all other species, as it is applied in the Greater Virunga Landscape.
•Australia is rich and megadiverse with one of the world’s worst extinction records.•Effective and efficient threatened species management can save more species.•Transparent allocation of resources ...will reveal undeclared species priorities.•Cost-effective prioritisation of actions will increase the number of managed species.•Threatened species management needs to adapt to new and changing threats.
Native flora and fauna species continue to decline in the megadiverse, wealthy, economically and politically stable nation of Australia despite current efforts in policy and management. Ongoing research is examining these declines, their causes and the adequacy of current policy, but strategies for improving the outcomes for threatened species have attracted less attention. We discuss several key aspects of Australia’s national threatened species management approach that potentially hinder the efficiency and effectiveness of management: the threatened species listing process is lengthy and biased; recovery plan development is resource intensive, restricted to a subset of species and often not effective; funding for threatened species management is not allocated efficiently or transparently; and management is not designed to incorporate uncertainties and adapt to changing future threats. Based on these issues we recommend four changes to current process: rationalize listing and assessment processes; develop approaches to prioritize species-based and threat-based responses cost-effectively; estimate funds required to recover species and secure longer term funding; and accommodate uncertainties and new threats into the current planning framework. Cost-effective prioritization for species and threats identifies which actions are likely to achieve the greatest benefits to species per unit cost, thereby managing more species and threats with available funds. These improvements can be made without legislative reform, additional funding or socio-economic shifts. If implemented, we believe more Australian threatened species will benefit from current efforts. Many of the challenges facing Australia are analogous to issues in other countries including the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom and these recommendations could assist in improving threatened species management.
Broad-scale overharvesting of fish is one of the major drivers of marine biodiversity loss and poverty, particularly in countries with high dependence on coral reefs. Given the heterogeneity of ...fishing effort and management success, and the scarcity of management resources, it is necessary to identify broad-scale locations for promoting successful fisheries management and conservation. Here, we assessed how fisheries management and conservation priorities in the Western Indian Ocean would change if the objectives were to (1) minimize lost fishing opportunity, (2) minimize the time for fish biomass to recover, (3) avoid locations of low management feasibility based on historical management outcomes, and (4) incorporate international collaboration to optimize the rate for achieving goals. When prioritizing for rapid recovery of fish biomass rather than minimizing lost fishing opportunity, we found that the area of priority management zones changed by over 60% in some countries. When locations of low management feasibility were avoided, the recovery time of fish biomass across the region increased 4-fold. International collaborations prioritized management zones in remote, high biomass, and low fishing pressure reefs and reduced the recovery time of fish 5-fold compared to non-collaboration scenarios. Thus, many of these conservation objectives favored wealthy and sparsely populated over poorer and natural resource dependent countries. Consequently, this study shows how prioritization policies, incentives, decisions, and conflicts will produce highly variable outcomes and challenges for sustainability.
•We demonstrate an integrated approach for coral reef conservation using Marxan.•We develop simple models of connections between ecosystems that require little data.•Integrated planning delivers ...different spatial priorities from a marine planning.•High priority reefs can become low priority using different types of connectivity.•Our approach can be used to consider diverse connections between different realms.
Coral reefs are threatened by human activities both on the land and in the sea. However, standard approaches for prioritizing locations for marine and terrestrial reserves neglect to consider connections between ecosystems. We demonstrate an integrated approach for coral reef conservation with the objective of prioritizing marine reserves close to catchments with high forest cover in order to facilitate ecological processes that rely upon intact land–sea protected area connections and minimize negative impact of land-based runoff on coral reefs. Our aims are to (1) develop and apply simple models of connections between ecosystems that require little data and (2) incorporate different types of connectivity models into spatial conservation prioritization. We compared how, if at all, the locations and attributes (e.g., costs) of priorities differ from an approach that ignores connections. We analyzed spatial prioritization plans that allow for no connectivity, adjacent connectivity in the sea, symmetric and asymmetric land–sea connectivity, and the combination of adjacent connectivity in the sea and asymmetric land–sea connectivity. The overall reserve system costs were similar for all scenarios. We discovered that integrated planning delivered substantially different spatial priorities compared to the approach that ignored connections. Only 11–40% of sites that were high priority for conservation were similar between scenarios with and without connectivity. Many coral reefs that were a high priority when we considered adjacent connectivity in the sea and ignored land–sea connectivity were assigned to low priorities when symmetric land–sea connectivity was included, and vice versa. Our approach can be applied to incorporate connections between ecosystems.
Different approaches exist for building a system of marine protected areas (MPAs), with stakeholder-based site selection at one end of the spectrum and science-based selection at the other. Although ...a combination of both approaches is typically adopted, the process tends to be dominated by one of them. However, for MPAs to be successful it is necessary that their design achieves a balance between both ecological conservation and socioeconomic needs. The present study aimed to assess, compare and integrate two different approaches to the planning process of MPAs in Wales (UK). A stakeholder-based approach and a science-based systematic approach were compared. Stakeholder priorities for the establishment of MPAs were identified during individual interviews with relevant stakeholders' representatives. Science-based solutions were developed using biological and socioeconomic spatial data in the decision support tool Marxan. A comparison of the outcomes generated by both approaches revealed that although the spatial configuration of the resulting MPAs differed, stakeholders performed well at including representative proportions of relevant marine habitats and species. The integration of the stakeholder driven approach with the science-based solution revealed that an integrated approach could be used as a tool to achieve conservation targets while simultaneously accounting for stakeholder's preferences, as the resulting integrated MPA solution met all conservation targets and was only slightly larger than the science-based solution alone. Results also revealed the potential utility of using stakeholders' knowledge as a proxy for identifying ecologically important areas when spatial data on conservation features are sparse.
•An assessment and integration of two approaches to MPA design was undertaken.•A stakeholder-based and science-based approach were compared.•Stakeholders performed well at including relevant proportions of important habitats.•Approach integration concurrently accounts for conservation and social preferences.
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