Grantee: Villy Christensen (UBC), Zach Ferdana (TNC)

Contact:  Villy Christensen (v.christensen at fisheries.ubc.ca)
                   Zach Ferdana (zferdana at tnc.org)

Website: www.ecopath.org, www.marineebm.org

Presentations:  A .pdf and an mp3 file of the initial overview presentation of this project are available through links at the bottom of this page.

Project Summary:

Ecosystem-Based Management (E-BM) is a multiple objective approach that in part requires an expansion of existing tools that explicitly link these objectives. Most spatial planning efforts have focused on single objectives (notably biodiversity conservation) and do not necessarily recognize how other sectors will be affected by that objective being met. Here we are concerned with two objectives, biodiversity conservation and fishery production, and we suggest to develop an integrated software tool that addresses them: an optimized site selection tool, Marxan (www.ecology.uq.edu.au/marxan.htm), and a fisheries-based ecosystem modeling tool, Ecopath with Ecosim (EwE, www.ecopath.org). These are extensively-used tools worldwide for marine biodiversity and fisheries research and management, respectively. Both offer a tremendous amount of flexibility and transparency in their design as decision support systems. While some work has been done to link biodiversity and fishery objectives within a single spatial planning framework (www.marineebm.org), we believe that more advanced features to the tools themselves can be incorporated to better facilitate an integrated E-BM approach.

This approach to E-BM attempts to broaden planning efforts and existing tools to accommodate these multiple objectives, or different stakeholder interests. The proposed work here will explicitly link information and spatial data on biodiversity conservation and fishery production and illustrate how advancing and enhancing these robust, credible tools can lead to more informed decision support. We propose to update and further develop a zoning tool, Ecoseed, for the EwE software package designed to evaluate placement of protected areas. An initial version of the tool was developed for a M.Sc. project by Alasdair Beattie, UBC in close collaboration with Villy Christensen and Daniel Pauly. Ecoseed builds on the spatial-dynamic module of EwE, Ecospace, and will (as implemented through the proposed activity) be designed to consider economic, social biodiversity, and ecological criteria. It works by the user defining potential sites (‘seed cells’) for placement of protected areas (can be all spatial cells); the program will then evaluate each of the seed cells, and iteratively pick the one that optimizes a given objectivity function. It will turn the best cell into a protected area, its neighboring cells will be designated as seed cells (if they have not already been deemed protected), and the process will continue till all cells have been protected. In the process the benefit and associated cost is recorded and visualized.

Ecoseed was incorporated into Beattie’s version of the EwE software, but has never been made available to users, and it has only been applied for the thesis work. EwE is currently being re-programmed in a new environment (.Net), and there are currently no plans, i.e. funding, to include Ecoseed in the updated version. Since Ecoseed and Ecospace provide the key linkage to other spatial tools, we propose to re-program the approach and incorporate it into the new version of EwE. In doing so, we will notably develop a new objectivity function for the placement of protected areas based on the following criteria: (1) rent of the fishery (by fleet category), (2) number of jobs in the fishing sector (by fleet category), (3) minimum biological acceptable levels for the individual species, (4) ecosystem structure, (e.g., using biomass-weighted longevity as criteria), (5) biomass diversity, and (6) boundary area/length ratio. We will add and modify criteria as deemed required, and each criterion will be evaluated based on a user-defined weighting factor. As an example, using the same weight for rent and diversity means that a 10% change in rent (relative to the baseline) will contribute the same as a 10% change in the diversity index.

In addition to the development of Ecoseed, the proposed activity will design and implement a more efficient link between two of the most widely-used tools for marine E-BM, EwE and Marxan. The optimization procedure as implemented in Ecoseed is quite primitive, and therefore to advance this tool we intend to evaluate alternative forms for optimization by enhancing the functionality of Ecospace to accommodate Marxan solutions.

Marxan is an optimized site selection tool that incorporates spatial data on biological and physical features, current impacts and human use into cells or assessment units. Marxan is designed to take large amounts of information and select sites at the lowest cost, (i.e. by minimizing the area to perimeter ratios) in areas of relatively less impact or human use while meeting stated conservation goals. We will develop capacity to import such solutions, or outputs from Marxan, into Ecospace to evaluate how optimized site selection cells capture biomass groups, dispersal rates, and migration patterns over time and space, as well as to evaluate potential economical, social and ecological consequences.

We propose to enhance Ecospace to accommodate output from Marxan by: (1) Creating interface functionality that imports Marxan solutions; (2) Incorporating Marxan solutions and other spatial data into the EwE database; (3) Building functionality that summarizes the results of Ecospace; and (4) Examining the relationship between Marxan (with focus on conservation) and Ecospace (with focus on fisheries, social and economical factors) cells to identify and evaluate various zoning scenarios.

We will arrange a training course in spatial modeling with emphasis on the use of the new tool Ecoseed and Ecospace, as well as linkages to Marxan, linked to the project activity. Participation, which will be on a cost-recovery basis, will be targeted on researchers from environmental NGOs and academia and will be offered through the EBM Tools Network.