IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/marpol/v61y2015icp95-102.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Using threat maps for cost-effective prioritization of actions to conserve coastal habitats

Author

Listed:
  • Giakoumi, Sylvaine
  • Brown, Christopher J.
  • Katsanevakis, Stelios
  • Saunders, Megan I.
  • Possingham, Hugh P.

Abstract

Marine coastal habitats provide valuable ecosystem services, including food provision, carbon sequestration, and coastal protection, but they are highly threatened by human activities. The multitude of human stressors affecting coastal habitats renders their conservation a difficult task for environmental agencies with limited budgets. This study, using seagrass meadows – one of the world's most threatened coastal habitats – proposes a transparent framework for the conservation of coastal habitats that links information from habitat and threat maps to conservation actions, and their costs. The proposed framework and the use of a predictive model of seagrass loss allowed the selection of the most cost-effective actions to abate stoppable threats (trawling and anchoring), while avoiding areas affected by threats that are more difficult to manage, such as coastal development. The relative improvement in cost achieved by using the proposed approach was examined by comparing with other common prioritization criteria that do not consider cost, including choosing sites based on threat level or habitat cover alone. The establishment of anti-trawling reefs was found to be the most cost-effective action to achieve the European Union conservation target for the protection of seagrass Posidonia oceanica meadows. The number of anti-trawling reefs and their establishment location was sensitive to fine-scale information on the distribution of fishing activities. The proposed approach always conserved the same habitat for lower cost than prioritization schemes that focus actions in areas of highest seagrass coverage or highest threat level. The study results suggest that conservation actions should not be prioritized on the basis of habitat maps and/or threat maps alone. Impact assessment and habitat vulnerability at a local scale would greatly benefit from detailed knowledge of the spatial distribution of stressors. At the same time, methods of scaling up the quantitative impact of stressors are urgently needed to understand their relationship with seascape-wide habitat coverage and to inform conservation of coastal habitats.

Suggested Citation

  • Giakoumi, Sylvaine & Brown, Christopher J. & Katsanevakis, Stelios & Saunders, Megan I. & Possingham, Hugh P., 2015. "Using threat maps for cost-effective prioritization of actions to conserve coastal habitats," Marine Policy, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 95-102.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:marpol:v:61:y:2015:i:c:p:95-102
    DOI: 10.1016/j.marpol.2015.07.004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308597X15002055
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.marpol.2015.07.004?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Grech, A. & Coles, R. & Marsh, H., 2011. "A broad-scale assessment of the risk to coastal seagrasses from cumulative threats," Marine Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(5), pages 560-567.
    2. Kerrie A. Wilson & Marissa F. McBride & Michael Bode & Hugh P. Possingham, 2006. "Prioritizing global conservation efforts," Nature, Nature, vol. 440(7082), pages 337-340, March.
    3. Gabriel Jordà & Núria Marbà & Carlos M. Duarte, 2012. "Mediterranean seagrass vulnerable to regional climate warming," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 2(11), pages 821-824, November.
    4. V. Chvatal, 1979. "A Greedy Heuristic for the Set-Covering Problem," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 4(3), pages 233-235, August.
    5. Ban, Natalie C. & Alidina, Hussein M. & Ardron, Jeff A., 2010. "Cumulative impact mapping: Advances, relevance and limitations to marine management and conservation, using Canada's Pacific waters as a case study," Marine Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(5), pages 876-886, September.
    6. Katsanevakis, Stelios & Levin, Noam & Coll, Marta & Giakoumi, Sylvaine & Shkedi, Daniel & Mackelworth, Peter & Levy, Ran & Velegrakis, Adonis & Koutsoubas, Drosos & Caric, Hrvoje & Brokovich, Eran & Ö, 2015. "Marine conservation challenges in an era of economic crisis and geopolitical instability: The case of the Mediterranean Sea," Marine Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 31-39.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Clarke Murray, Cathryn & Agbayani, Selina & Alidina, Hussein M. & Ban, Natalie C., 2015. "Advancing marine cumulative effects mapping: An update in Canada’s Pacific waters," Marine Policy, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 71-77.
    2. Guillermo J. Martínez Pastur & Dante Loto & Julián Rodríguez-Souilla & Eduarda M. O. Silveira & Juan M. Cellini & Pablo L. Peri, 2024. "Different Approaches of Forest Type Classifications for Argentina Based on Functional Forests and Canopy Cover Composition by Tree Species," Resources, MDPI, vol. 13(5), pages 1-20, April.
    3. Gadamus, Lily & Raymond-Yakoubian, Julie & Ashenfelter, Roy & Ahmasuk, Austin & Metcalf, Vera & Noongwook, George, 2015. "Building an indigenous evidence-base for tribally-led habitat conservation policies," Marine Policy, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 116-124.
    4. Sheaves, Marcus & Brookes, Justin & Coles, Rob & Freckelton, Marnie & Groves, Paul & Johnston, Ross & Winberg, Pia, 2014. "Repair and revitalisation of Australia׳s tropical estuaries and coastal wetlands: Opportunities and constraints for the reinstatement of lost function and productivity," Marine Policy, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 23-38.
    5. Lennox, Gareth D. & Armsworth, Paul R., 2011. "Suitability of short or long conservation contracts under ecological and socio-economic uncertainty," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 222(15), pages 2856-2866.
    6. Davidov, Sreten & Pantoš, Miloš, 2017. "Planning of electric vehicle infrastructure based on charging reliability and quality of service," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 1156-1167.
    7. Chiara Richiardi & Maria Rita Minciardi & Consolata Siniscalco & Maria Adamo, 2023. "Cumulative Spatial and Temporal Analysis of Anthropogenic Impacts in the Protected Area of the Gran Paradiso National Park in the NW Alps, Italy," Land, MDPI, vol. 12(6), pages 1-21, May.
    8. Cho, Seong-Hoon & Kim, Seung Gyu & Roberts, Roland K. & Jung, Suhyun, 2009. "Amenity values of spatial configurations of forest landscapes over space and time in the Southern Appalachian Highlands," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(10), pages 2646-2657, August.
    9. Filipe Rodrigues & Agostinho Agra & Lars Magnus Hvattum & Cristina Requejo, 2021. "Weighted proximity search," Journal of Heuristics, Springer, vol. 27(3), pages 459-496, June.
    10. Lan, Guanghui & DePuy, Gail W. & Whitehouse, Gary E., 2007. "An effective and simple heuristic for the set covering problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 176(3), pages 1387-1403, February.
    11. Song, Zhe & Kusiak, Andrew, 2010. "Mining Pareto-optimal modules for delayed product differentiation," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 201(1), pages 123-128, February.
    12. Tara G Martin & Iadine Chadès & Peter Arcese & Peter P Marra & Hugh P Possingham & D Ryan Norris, 2007. "Optimal Conservation of Migratory Species," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 2(8), pages 1-5, August.
    13. Seona Lee & Sang-Ho Lee & HyungJune Lee, 2020. "Timely directional data delivery to multiple destinations through relay population control in vehicular ad hoc network," International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks, , vol. 16(5), pages 15501477209, May.
    14. Zhuang, Yanling & Zhou, Yun & Yuan, Yufei & Hu, Xiangpei & Hassini, Elkafi, 2022. "Order picking optimization with rack-moving mobile robots and multiple workstations," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 300(2), pages 527-544.
    15. Menghong Li & Yingli Ran & Zhao Zhang, 2022. "A primal-dual algorithm for the minimum power partial cover problem," Journal of Combinatorial Optimization, Springer, vol. 44(3), pages 1913-1923, October.
    16. Mathieu Bonneau & Régis Sabbadin & Fred A Johnson & Bradley Stith, 2018. "Dynamic minimum set problem for reserve design: Heuristic solutions for large problems," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(3), pages 1-23, March.
    17. Guillem Chust & Ernesto Villarino & Matthew McLean & Nova Mieszkowska & Lisandro Benedetti-Cecchi & Fabio Bulleri & Chiara Ravaglioli & Angel Borja & Iñigo Muxika & José A. Fernandes-Salvador & Leire , 2024. "Cross-basin and cross-taxa patterns of marine community tropicalization and deborealization in warming European seas," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-13, December.
    18. Wang, Yiyuan & Pan, Shiwei & Al-Shihabi, Sameh & Zhou, Junping & Yang, Nan & Yin, Minghao, 2021. "An improved configuration checking-based algorithm for the unicost set covering problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 294(2), pages 476-491.
    19. Claron, Charles & Mikou, Mehdi & Levrel, Harold & Tardieu, Léa, 2022. "Mapping urban ecosystem services to design cost-effective purchase of development rights programs: The case of the Greater Paris metropolis," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 122(C).
    20. C Guéret & N Jussien & O Lhomme & C Pavageau & C Prins, 2003. "Loading aircraft for military operations," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 54(5), pages 458-465, May.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:marpol:v:61:y:2015:i:c:p:95-102. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/marpol .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.