Clearing forests for oil palm plantations is a major threat to tropical terrestrial biodiversity, and may potentially have large impacts on downstream marine ecosystems (e.g., coral reefs). However, ...little is known about the impacts of runoff from oil palm plantations, so it is not clear how oil palm development should be modified to minimize the risk of degrading marine ecosystems, or how marine conservation plans should be modified to account for the impacts of oil palm development. We coupled terrestrial and marine biophysical models to simulate changes in sediment/nutrient composition on reefs as a result of oil palm development in Papua New Guinea, and predicted the response of coral and seagrass ecosystems to different land-use scenarios. The condition of almost 60% of coastal ecosystems were predicted to be substantially degraded (more than a 50% decline from their initial state) after 5years if all suitable land was converted to oil palm, with only 4% of coastal ecosystems improving in condition as trees matured. We evaluated marine ecosystem condition if the oil palm developments were consistent with global sustainability guidelines and found that there were only slight improvements in ecosystems condition compared to the scenario with complete conversion of forest to oil palm. Substantially reducing the impact of oil palm development on marine ecosystems required limiting new plantings to hill slopes below 15°, a more stringent restriction than currently allowed for in the sustainability guidelines. We evaluated priority marine conservation areas given current land-use and found reef ecosystems in these areas will likely be heavily degraded in the future from runoff. We find that marine conservation plans should be modified to prioritize turbid areas where coral communities may be more tolerant of increased suspended sediment in the water. The approach developed here provides guidelines for modifying marine conservation priorities in areas with oil palm development. Importantly, oil palm development guidelines cannot be truly ecologically sustainable unless they are modified to account for the impacts of oil palm on coastal marine ecosystems.
Tun Mustapha Park, in Sabah, Malaysia, was gazetted in May 2016 and is the first multiple-use park in Malaysia where conservation, sustainable resource use and development co-occur within one ...management framework. We applied a systematic conservation planning tool, Marxan with Zones, and stakeholder consultation to design and revise the draft zoning plan. This process was facilitated by Sabah Parks, a government agency, and WWF-Malaysia, under the guidance of the Tun Mustapha Park steering committee and with support from the University of Queensland. Four conservation and fishing zones, including no-take areas, were developed, each with representation and replication targets for key marine habitats, and a range of socio-economic and community objectives. Here we report on how decision-support tools informed the reserve design process in three planning stages: prioritization, government review, and community consultation. Using marine habitat and species representation as a reporting metric, we describe how the zoning plan changed at each stage of the design process. We found that the changes made to the zoning plan by the government and stakeholders resulted in plans that compromised the achievement of conservation targets because no-take areas were moved away from villages and the coastline, where unique habitats are located. The design process highlights a number of lessons learned for future conservation zoning, which we believe will be useful as many other places embark on similar zoning processes on land and in the sea.
Systematic conservation planning research has focused on designing systems of conservation areas that efficiently protect a comprehensive and representative set of species and habitats. Recently, ...there has been an emphasis on improving the adequacy of conservation area design to promote the persistence and future generation of biodiversity. Few studies have explored incorporating ecological and evolutionary processes into conservation planning assessments. Biodiversity in Australia is maintained and generated by numerous ecological and evolutionary processes at various spatial and temporal scales. We accommodated ecological and evolutionary processes in four ways: (1) using sub-catchments as planning units to facilitate the protection of the integrity and function of ecosystem processes occurring on a sub-catchment scale; (2) targeting one type of ecological refugia, drought refugia, which are critical for the persistence of many species during widespread drought; (3) targeting one type of evolutionary refugia which are important for maintaining and generating unique biota during long-term climatic changes; and (4) preferentially grouping priority areas along vegetated waterways to account for the importance of connected waterways and associated riparian areas in maintaining processes. We identified drought refugia, areas of relatively high and regular herbage production in arid and semiarid Australia, from estimates of gross primary productivity derived from satellite data. In this paper, we combined the novel incorporation of these processes with a more traditional framework of efficiently representing a comprehensive sample of biodiversity to identify spatial priorities across Australia. We explored the trade-offs between economic costs, representation targets, and connectivity. Priority areas that considered ecological and evolutionary processes were more connected along vegetated waterways and were identified for a small increase in economic cost. Priority areas for conservation investment are more likely to have long-term benefits to biodiversity if ecological and evolutionary processes are considered in their identification.
Although marine protected areas can simultaneously contribute to biodiversity conservation and fisheries management, the global network is biased toward particular ecosystem types because they have ...been established primarily in an ad hoc fashion. The optimization of tradeoffs between biodiversity benefits and socioeconomic values increases success of protected areas and minimizes enforcement costs in the long run, but it is often neglected in marine spatial planning (MSP). Although the acquisition of spatially explicit socioeconomic data is perceived as a costly or secondary step in MSP, it is critical to account for lost opportunities by people whose activities will be restricted, especially fishers. We developed an easily reproduced habitat-based approach to estimate the spatial distribution of opportunity cost to fishers in data-poor regions. We assumed the most accessible areas have higher economic and conservation values than less accessible areas and their designation as no-take zones represents a loss of fishing opportunities. We estimated potential distribution of fishing resources from bathymétrie ranges and benthic habitat distribution and the relative importance of the different resources for each port of total catches, revenues, and stakeholder perception. In our model, we combined different cost layers to produce a comprehensive cost layer so that we could evaluate of trade-offs. Our approach directly supports conservation planning, can be applied generally, and is expected to facilitate stakeholder input and community acceptance of conservation. Aunque las áreas marinas protegidas (AMPs) pueden contribuir simultáneamente a la conservación de la biodiversidady al manejo de las pesquerías, la red global está sesgada hacia tipos particulares de ecosistemas porque las AMPs se han establecido primordialmente de manera ad hoc. La optimización de las compensaciones entre los beneficios de la biodiversidad y los valores socio-económicos incrementa el éxito de las áreas protegidas y minimiza los costos de ejecución a la larga, pero frecuentemente se ignora durante la planeación espacial marina (MSP, en inglés). Aunque la obtención de datos socio-económicos espacialmente explícitos sepercibe como costosa o como un paso secundario en la MSP, es crítico considerar las oportunidade perdidas por las personas cuyas actividades serán restringidas, especialmente las pesquerías. Desarrollamos una estrategia de fácil reproducción con base en el habitat para estimar la distribución espacial del costo de oportunidad para los pescadores en regiones pobres en datos. Asumimos que las áreas más accesibles tienen valores económicos y de conservación más altos que las áreas menos accesibles y su designación como zonas de extracción nula representa una pérdida de oportunidades de pesca. Estimamos la distribución potencial de los recursos pesqueros a partir de rangos batimétricos y la distribución de habitats bénticos, y la importancia relativa de los diferentes recursos para cada puerto de capturas totales, ingresos y percepción de los accionistas En nuestro modelo combinamos diferentes niveles de costo para producir un nivel comprensivo de costo para así poder evaluar las compensaciones. Nuestra estrategia respalda directamente a la planeación de la conservación, puede aplicarse de manera general, y se espera que facilite la contribución de los accionistas y la aceptación de la conservación por parte de la comunidad. 虽然海洋保护地可以同时促进生物多祥性保护和渔业管理，但全球网络倾向于保护特定类型的生态系統，因为它们主要以某种特別的方式建立。生物多样性收益和社会经济价值之间的最优权衡有利于促进保护地的成 功保护和降低长期的执行成本，但海洋空间规划（MSP)却常常忽略这一点。尽管获取空间明确的社会经济数据 被认为是MSP中昂贵或次要的一歩, 但是这对于统计活动受限人群(特別是渔民) 的机会流失是很重要的。我 们开发了ー个易于重复的基于栖息地的方法来估计数据缺乏地区渔民机会成本的空间分布。我们假设最容易进 人的地区比难以进入的地区有更高的经济和保护价值，且它们被指定为禁渔区意味着捕鱼机会的丧失。我们根 据海洋測深范围和底栖栖息地分布估计了渔业资源的潜在分布，还分析了不同资源在每个ロ岸的总渔获量、收 人和利益相关者认为的相対重要性。我们在模型中结合了不同成本批次得到综合成本批次来评估得失的权衡。我们的方法直接支持了保护规划，并可以得到广泛应用,这将有望促进利益相关者的投入和社区对保护的接受 度。
We compared the effectiveness of marine reserve networks designed using a numerical optimization tool with networks designed by stakeholders during the course of California's Marine Life Protection ...Act Initiative at representing biodiversity and minimizing estimated negative impacts to fishermen. We used the same spatial data representing biodiversity and recreational fishing effort that were used by the stakeholders to design marine reserves. In addition, we used commercial fishing data not explicitly available to the stakeholders. Networks of marine reserves designed with numerical optimization tools represented the same amount of each habitat, or more, and had less of an estimated impact on commercial and recreational fisheries than networks designed by the stakeholders. The networks designed by the stakeholders could have represented 2.0–9.5% more of each habitat with no additional impact on the fisheries. Of four different marine reserve proposals considered in the initiative, the proposal designed by fishermen was more efficient than the proposals designed by other stakeholder groups at representing biodiversity and minimizing impact to the fishing industry. These results highlight the necessity of using comprehensive information on fishing effort to design a reserve network that efficiently minimizes negative socioeconomic impacts. We recommend that numerical optimization tools support, not replace, the stakeholder‐driven reserve design process along California's northern and southern coasts to help accomplish two of the initiative's core objectives: (1) Protect representative and unique marine habitats, and (2) Minimize negative socioeconomic impacts. The involvement of stakeholders is necessary as additional factors important to reserve design can not be considered using a numerical optimization tool.
PDF
