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Marine protected areas (MPAs) and zoning plans require an understanding of stakeholders if they are to be successful at achieving social and biological objectives. This study examines recreational boaters in a proposed MPA in British Columbia, Canada, using the recreation opportunity spectrum (ROS) and models of recreation conflict as a basis for investigation. Boaters (n = 543) visiting the region during the summer completed face-to-face surveys. Results show variability in boater setting preferences, supporting an ROS-based approach to MPA planning and zoning. While boaters as a whole placed the greatest importance on natural settings, sailboat operators expressed stronger preferences for natural and quiet settings relative to motorboats, and motorboat operators expressed stronger preferences for settings characterized by built facilities and extractive activities relative to sailboats. Several marine activities emerged as sources of perceived conflict for boaters, including personal watercraft, commercial whale watching vessels, and shellfish aquaculture. Our analysis indicates that while some of these may be addressed through zoning, others are better addressed through education and communication. Recommendations for both MPA management and future research are made.

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Access to current, comprehensive, and reliable spatial information is necessary for informed decision making in integrated coastal and ocean management. This need is being met through development of a marine spatial information infrastructure that encompasses both technological and institutional responses. This article traces Canada's experience in developing a marine spatial information infrastructure over the last 30 years starting with the compilation of coastal atlases, through the development of geographic information systems, to remote data acquisition instruments and Web mapping portals. Because of the plethora of initiatives, it has been essential to be selected and limit the number and choice of examples. The institutional response has lagged behind that of technological innovation and hinges on understanding users' needs and decision support drivers, sustainability of institutional and individual champions,and, above all, cooperation and collaboration among the broad community of practice.

Effective resource planning incorporates people-place relationships, allowing these efforts to be inclusive of the different local beliefs, interests, activities and needs. ‘Geovisualizations’ can serve as potentially powerful tools for facilitating ‘place-conscious’ resource planning, as they can be developed with high degrees of realism and accuracy, allowing people to recognize and relate to them as ‘real places’. However, little research has been done on this potential, and the place-based applications of these visual tools are poorly understood. This study takes steps toward addressing this gap by exploring the relationship between sense of place and ‘visualization of place’. Residents of the Capital Regional District of BC, Canada, were surveyed about their relationship with local coastal places, concerns for the coast, and how they mentally visualize these places. Factor analysis identified four sense of place dimensions - nature protection values, community and economic well-being values, place identity and place dependence, and four coastal concerns dimensions - ecological, private opportunities, public space and boating impacts. Visualization data were coded and treated as dependent variables in a series of logistic regressions that used sense of place and coastal concerns dimensions as predictors. Results indicated that different aspects of sense of place and (to a lesser degree) concerns for places influence the types of elements people include in their mental visualization of place. In addition, sense of place influenced the position and perspective people assume in these visualizations. These findings suggest that key visual elements and perspectives speak to different place relationships, which has implications for developing and using geovisualizations in terms of what elements should be included in tools and (if appropriate) depicted as affected by potential management or development scenarios.

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Advancements in GIS and media technologies have created opportunities for developing realistic and geographically-accurate representations of the environment that can be recognized and related to as "real places." In turn, these "geovisualizations" can connect with the meanings, values, beliefs, and/or feelings people associate with places, i.e., their "sense of place," which positions them as powerful place-based tools for inclusive and collaborative environmental management efforts. However, despite their place-based applications, geovisualization studies rarely explicitly incorporate place theories and concepts. This lack of integration is reflected in the current state of knowledge, as much of geovisualization research has advanced knowledge on technological capacity for processing and rendering images from spatial data, whereas knowledge on how people interact with and use these tools in collaborative management strategies has lagged behind. This research effort serves as a move toward addressing this knowledge gap by explicitly illustrating the relationship between sense of place and applications of geovisualizations in collaborative management. The paper employs ideas from research on human-media interactions and conceptual models from research on sense of presence to synthesize a coherent theory on how geovisualizations can function as place-based tools. The paper then reviews landscape visualization studies to provide evidence that geovisualizations can operate as place-based tools. Such evidence includes observations on geovisualizations' ability to communicate "meaningful information" on places, elicit responses reflective of particular place-based values, and evoke emotional responses associated with places.