Systematic Conservation Planning with Marxan

Abstract

Conservation planning is the science of choosing which actions to take where for the purpose of conserving biodiversity. Creating a system of protected areas is the most common form of systematic conservation planning. Hence, we will focus on the process of protected area selection in this chapter. Marxan is the most widely used software in the world for creating marine and terrestrial protected area systems. Because conservation planning is an important job skill for conservation and resource managers, you should understand the principles involved even if you don't use this software in your job and even if you use software other than Marxan for systematic conservation planning. From this chapter, we would like you to: 1. Gain an understanding of the principles of conservation planning: representation, complementarity, adequacy, efficiency, and spatial compactness; 2. See and understand how these principles can be applied to a practical example; and 3. Gain familiarity with Marxan software (via the Zonae Cogito interface). In Exercise 1, you will explore a simple reserve design problem using a spreadsheet exercise (Exercise1.xls) to implement the basic principles of reserve design in a simple hypothetical landscape. In Exercise 2, you will use Marxan to design systems of protected areas in Tasmania. You will run Marxan through Zonae Cogito, a decision support system through which Marxan can be run in an interactive and user-friendly way. Software installation for Exercise 2 requires following detailed instructions ... and will likely require administrator privileges on your machine to install and operate properly. All the data files needed to complete the exercises can be found on the book website, along with some options for additional advanced exercises.