Developing quantitative management plans for marine protected areas

Connectivity and climate change have increasingly been explored with respect to terrestrial ecosystems, but what about marine ecosystems? In their recent review in Biological Conservation, Magris et al. take a comprehensive look at the literature surrounding marine protected areas, and how connectivity and climate change are incorporated into strategies for continued population persistence. They find that most literature available mentions connectivity and climate change, but only in qualitative and theoretical terms without a strong quantitative basis for detailed planning and management actions. Interestingly, they found that studies addressing climate change were overwhelmingly qualitative, and while connectivity was more substantially addressed quantitatively, it was mostly without ecological justification or done so through literature reviews.

In light of this lack of clear guidance for planning marine protected areas to preserve connectivity in the context of climate change, the authors propose a framework of six complementary approaches to setting objectives for conservation planning that vary in information required and ecological relevance: (1) stating preferences for spatial arrangement of protected areas ; (2) applying rules-of-thumb for size and spacing of protected areas; (3) tailoring objectives for species replication and representation to specific features; (4) using decision-support tools such as Marxan; (5) using structural or functional surrogates; and (6) using dynamic system features to target functional surrogates. This framework is presented as a starting point for marine conservation planning that considers both the utility of connectivity in maintaining population persistence and biodiversity, and the dynamic nature of climate change that creates the need for adaptive management.