Using GIS fuzzy-set modelling to integrate social-ecological data to support overall resilience in marine protected area spatial planning: A case study

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are useful conservation tools for balancing the complex social-ecological interactions and demands within a given marine area. Often designing, reviewing, and assessing existing MPAs can be a complicated task often based on patchy ecological data, biases towards certain stakeholder groups, and static snapshots of current information. Taking a social-ecological resilience approach, this study has developed an innovative way of using fuzzy-set multi-criteria evaluations in GIS modelling to integrate existing ecological data for a marine area with information from a diverse set of stakeholders to gain an understanding of the overlaps between social and ecological assets within an MPA. Adaptive management frameworks were considered by exploring stakeholder feedback in regards to the current spatial plan and using a social-ecological spatially informed Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) analysis to create a current snapshot of the MPA’s vulnerability. The BBN was then used to predict how climate change may affect sensitive habitats and demonstrates the increase of vulnerability for both habitats and marine species when allowing fishing pressure to occur across the entire MPA. A series of decision-making maps were created that integrated all of this information. Using this current and predicted social-ecological spatial information about an MPA, can assist decision-makers and the local community by giving them the tools to make informed decisions about how to better design an MPA that meets and supports long-term social-ecological resilience.Thank you to the Lesslie Research Scholarship in Landscape Conservation and Ecology grant, the Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University, and the Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship for funding this research project