Open AccessTradeoffs in marine reserve design: habitat condition, representation, and socioeconomic costs
Author(s) -
Klein Carissa J.,
Tulloch Vivitskaia J.,
Halpern Benjamin S.,
Selkoe Kimberly A.,
Watts Matthew E.,
Steinback Charles,
Scholz Astrid,
Possingham Hugh P.
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
conservation letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.153
H-Index - 79
ISSN - 1755-263X
DOI - 10.1111/conl.12005
Subject(s) - habitat , socioeconomic status , proxy (statistics) , environmental resource management , economic cost , opportunity cost , marine reserve , habitat conservation , climate change , cost–benefit analysis , natural resource economics , business , environmental science , ecology , geography , economics , computer science , population , demography , sociology , biology , neoclassical economics , machine learning
We present a novel method for designing marine reserves that trades off three important attributes of a conservation plan: habitat condition, habitat representation, and socioeconomic costs. We calculated habitat condition in four ways, using different human impacts as a proxy for condition: all impacts; impacts that cannot be managed with a reserve; land‐based impacts; and climate change impacts. We demonstrate our approach in California, where three important tradeoffs emerged. First, reserve systems that have a high chance of protecting good condition habitats cost fishers less than 3.1% of their income. Second, cost to fishers can be reduced by 1/2–2/3 by triaging less than 1/3 of habitats. Finally, increasing the probability of protecting good condition habitats from 50% to 99% costs fishers an additional 1.7% of their income, with roughly 0.3% added costs for each additional 10% confidence. Knowing exactly what the cost of these tradeoffs are informs discussion and potential compromise among stakeholders involved in protected area planning worldwide.