1. Marine Conservation: From Regional Assessments to Action

2. The Context Huge losses in coastal habitats throughout USA
Significant declines in top marine predators & fisheries
Declines in coastal condition
Loss of ecosystem services
Calls for regionally informed conservation & management
of marine ecosystems
Need data and decision-
support to inform priorities
Shifting baselines, Habitat loss, dead zones, nutrification, coastal development, declines in fish and invertebrate populations--- it is useful to remember that while fisheries are an consideration in the SE and can adversely affect impact biodiversity– there are many other important factors as well in terms of understanding, conserving and managing these ecosystems

3. Setting Priorities for Marine Conservation
Objectives
Develop Assessments with partners
Enable Objective Decision Support
Develop Advancements in Methods
Support Action on Marine Priorities

4. Ecoregional Assessments
Process
Identify conservation targets-- ecosystems & spp.
Gather available information
Set conservation goals
Identify costs/suitability factors
Develop initial priority sites using Marxan
Evaluate results with experts
Develop final portfolio of TNC action sites
Products:
data
decision support
site priorities
Pubs by Groves, Beck, Ferdana– and the basic approach is widely used by many– we have adopted and adapted not invented
Numerous Scientific Pubs

5. Carolinian Assessment
Coastal waters of
VA, NC, SC, GA, FL
Tidal marshes to
continental shelf (200 m)
~ million hectares
Contiguous with 5 other marine and terrestrial ecoregions
Funded by EPA Office of Water
Funded by EPA Office of Water.
Coastal waters of Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida.
Boundaries – Chesapeake south to Cape Canaveral. Continental Shelf (200m isobath) west to the zone where salt-influenced vegetation disappears.
The ecoregion encompasses about million hectares (44 million acres).

6. Carolinian Targets 36 conservation targets: Salt and brackish marshes
Oyster reefs
Seagrasses
Shoreline types
Sea turtle nesting beaches
Shorebird and water bird habitat
Right whale calving grounds
Short-nose sturgeon habitat
Offshore hard-bottom areas
Benthic habitat types
HAPCs
Gathered spatial data for 36 targets at ecoregional scale:
Shoreline types (fine-sand beaches, coarse-sand beaches, etc.)
Salt and brackish marshes and other tidal and submerged lands
Oyster reefs
Seagrasses
Sea turtle nesting beaches
Shorebird and water bird habitat
Right whale calving grounds
Short-nose sturgeon habitat
Offshore hard-bottom areas
Bathymetric complexity
HAPCs

7. Conservation Costs and Suitability Index
Mapped data for 10 “cost factors” to develop a Suitability Index:
population growth
housing density
road density
major port facilities
shipping lanes
dredged channels
hardened shorelines
Superfund sites
NPDES permits
dredge disposal sites

8. Stratification / Planning Units
6 subregions (strata) encompass geographic variation and spread risk
~12,000 planning units, 1,500 ha each

9. Selecting sites with algorithms: Marxan
Program Aims: To identify efficient (‘cheapest’) solutions to meet conservation goals for all targets
Uses Site Selection algorithm-- “Simulated Annealing”
Credible, peer reviewed & widely used;
Our Aims: To provide Decision Support and a strawman set of sites to be revised in scientific workshops
Used by NOAA for MPAs (Channel Islands) & to identify EFH (Cooke and Auster); couple of Science Publications

10. Assessment Results: MARXAN “Best Solution”
Represent ~22 percent of the ecoregion (3.9 million hectares)
Goals were met for all targets and exceeded for several
MARXAN chose 78 conservation areas as an initial “best overall” result.
These 78 sites had a combined area of 2,603 planning units, or about 3.9 million hectares (9.6 million acres)
They represented about 22 percent of the total area of the ecoregion (well within general planning guidelines).
These results were then reviewed by TNC staff within the Marine Initiative and Southeastern Region along with partners and experts.

11. Assessment Results: MARXAN “Summed Solution”
Shows how many times each planning unit was selected
Measures potential conservation value
Helps identify potential core areas
The “summed solution” represents how many times each planning unit was selected in the repeated runs of MARXAN.
This can be interpreted as one measure of a planning unit’s biological importance - and potential conservation value - relative to less frequently selected units.
It can be used to identify core areas that are most likely to be needed for inclusion in a final set of conservation areas.

12. Assessment Results: Final Conservation Areas
Experts recommended few changes to MARXAN results
Clustered units into more biologically meaningful sites
41 areas, ~21 percent of the ecoregion (3.77 million hectares)
The final conservation portfolio includes a total of 41 areas – encompassing about 21 percent of the ecoregion (2,510 planning units or 3.77 million hectares).
Experts recommended few substantive changes to the MARXAN results per se. Most resulted from clustering units into more biologically meaningful sites.
The final portfolio incorporated most of the units that were selected in multiple MARXAN runs (204 planning units were selected in > 90 percent of the runs and all but three were included in the final portfolio).
Summed sol’n results included

13. TNC’s Priority Action Areas
Ten areas selected as initial priorities
• Indian River Lagoon
• St. Mary’s-Satilla-Cumberland Is.
• Altamaha-Ogeechee
• ACE Basin
• Sewee-Santee-Winyah Bay
• Onslow Bight
• Pamlico Sound-Outer Banks
• Charleston Bump and Gyre
• Onslow Bight Ocean Complex
• Outer Banks Ocean Complex
No strategies are assumed in this site selection

14. Conservation by Design
TNC’s Priority Action Areas
Next Steps
Focus on 4-6 Priority Conservation Areas
Workshops with partners– Develop actions
Hire SE Marine Regional Coordinator
Expand from existing work
Conservation by Design
Action
Measures
Priorities
Strategies

15. Some Strategies in the Toolbox
Habitat Restoration (TNC-NOAA CRP)
Submerged Lands- Lease, Ownership & Stewardship
Fishery Buybacks
Coastal Lands– purchases to partnerships
MPAs
Freshwater Inflow (ACoE)

16. Flexibility in Decision Support
Base model
Key Products:
Data
Decision Support
Priorities

17. Enhancing Decision Support
Next Steps
Develop E-BM toolkit in partnership w/ Packard Fdn
Make tools available to inform E-BM, MPAs, Gap
Possible Additions to Decision Support Model
Add Fishing Intensity
Hazard mitigation- Storms & Sea-level Rise
More Land-Sea Integration (NOAA CSC)
Benthic Model- Refine & Test (w/ NOAA in CA)

18. Current Status of Assessments

19. Summary Strengths of Approach: Informing Ecosystem Management
Balanced species, ecosystems & human uses
Transparent decisions
Data driven
Efficient designs
Flexible
Credible, peer reviewed &
widely used
Informs actions