Operationalizing ecological connectivity in spatial conservation planning with Marxan Connect

Abstract

Globally, protected areas are being established to protect biodiversity and to promote ecosystem resilience. The typical spatial conservation planning process leading to the creation of these protected areas focuses on representation and replication of ecological features, often using decision support tools such as Marxan. Yet, despite the important role ecological connectivity has in metapopulation persistence and resilience, Marxan currently requires manual input or specialized scripts to explicitly consider connectivity. ‘Marxan Connect’ is a new open source, open access Graphical User Interface (GUI) tool designed to assist conservation planners with the appropriate use of data on ecological connectivity in protected area network planning. Marxan Connect can facilitate the use of estimates of demographic connectivity (e.g. derived from animal tracking data, dispersal models, or genetic tools) or structural landscape connectivity (e.g. isolation by resistance). This is accomplished by calculating metapopulation‐relevant connectivity metrics (e.g. eigenvector centrality) and treating those as conservation features or by including the connectivity data as a spatial dependency amongst sites in the prioritization process. Marxan Connect allows a wide group of users to incorporate directional ecological connectivity into conservation planning with Marxan. The solutions provided by Marxan Connect, combined with ecologically relevant post‐hoc testing, are more likely to support persistent and resilient metapopulations (e.g. fish stocks) and provide better protection for biodiversity.

Fine-Scale Coral Connectivity Pathways in the Florida Reef Tract: Implications for Conservation and Restoration

“…This of course requires defining the need of protection of a reef and its suitability for restoration projects. Daigle et al (2020) and Kininmonth et al (2019) have shown that the best strategy for achieving metapopulation persistence was to protect sites based on their outgoing PageRank index. Here we go one step further and argue that among stronger exporters, we should focus protection efforts on those that are the most fragile (i.e., the weak importers).…”

Marine connectivity in spatial conservation planning: analogues from the terrestrial realm

“…Marxan operates on polygons (pre-defined planning units) whereas Zonation operates on high-resolution grids that model, among other things, variable habitat quality and costs. Recently, Marxan Connect implemented a host of graph-theoretic connectivity (Minor and Urban 2007) measures into Marxan analysis (Daigle et al 2018). There are examples of the use of Marxan and Marxan Connect in the marine context (Beger et al 2010;Weeks 2017;Daigle et al 2018), but we will not repeat this previously published material here.…”

“…Recently, Marxan Connect implemented a host of graph-theoretic connectivity (Minor and Urban 2007) measures into Marxan analysis (Daigle et al 2018). There are examples of the use of Marxan and Marxan Connect in the marine context (Beger et al 2010;Weeks 2017;Daigle et al 2018), but we will not repeat this previously published material here. Rather, we draw from terrestrial parallels and investigate the role of the connectivity methods of Zonation (version 4) in marine spatial prioritization, which is poorly covered by prior publications.…”

Spatially explicit species distribution models: A missed opportunity in conservation planning?

“…Such processes shape the distribution and abundance of species (Pressey, Cabeza, Watts, Cowling, & Wilson, ) with connectivity playing a paramount and distinct role in terrestrial (Lockwood, ), marine (Carr et al, ), and freshwater ecosystems (Hermoso, Filipe, Segurado, & Beja, ). Incorporating spatial connectivity in the planning process has, therefore, important implications for designing protected areas (Daigle et al, ; van Teeffelen, Cabeza, & Moilanen, ; Weeks, ). This fact is also reflected in the software that is used in conservation planning, such as marxan (Ball, Possingham, & Watts, ) or zonation (Lehtomäki & Moilanen, ).…”

“…When accounting for spatial connectivity, conservation plans inherently build the protected areas based on the spatial dependencies in the planning units as well. For example, it is vital to account for the spatial structure of the environment around a given planning unit for assessing its importance as part of a protected area (Daigle et al, ; Weeks, ). However, this key characteristic of spatial dependency is rarely applied in the underlying conservation features themselves, which provide the basis for the conservation planning.…”