A user-friendly tool to evaluate the effectiveness of no-take marine reserves

Abstract

Marine reserves are implemented to achieve a variety of objectives, but are seldom rigorously evaluated to determine whether those objectives are met. In the rare cases when evaluations do take place, they typically focus on ecological indicators and ignore other relevant objectives such as socioeconomics and governance. And regardless of the objectives, the diversity of locations, monitoring protocols, and analysis approaches hinder the ability to compare results across case studies. Moreover, analysis and evaluation of reserves is generally conducted by outside researchers, not the reserve managers or users, plausibly thereby hindering effective local management and rapid response to change. We present a framework and tool, called “MAREA”, to overcome these challenges. Its purpose is to evaluate the extent to which any given reserve has achieved its stated objectives. MAREA provides specific guidance on data collection and formatting, and then conducts rigorous causal inference analysis based on data input by the user, providing real-time outputs about the effectiveness of the reserve. MAREA’s ease of use, standardization of state-of-the-art inference methods, and ability to analyze marine reserve effectiveness across ecological, socioeconomic, and governance objectives could dramatically further our understanding and support of effective marine reserve management.

An interdisciplinary evaluation of community-based TURF-reserves

“…Our results indicate that these TURF-reserves have not increased lobster densities. Additionally, no co-benefits were identified when using other ecological indicators aside from the previously reported buffering effect that reserves can have to environmental variability in Isla Natividad, as well as positive trends in invertebrate and fish densities [15, 34]. The socioeconomic indicators pertaining landings and revenues showed little to no change after reserve implementation.…”

“…This provides us with a Before-After-Control-Impact ( i.e . BACI) sampling design that allows us to capture and control for temporal and spatial dynamics and causally attribute the changes to the reserve [30–34].…”

“…This approach is widely used in econometric literature to estimate the average treatment effect of an intervention, like the impact of minimum wage increases on employment rates [43]. In our case it allows us to estimate the effect that the reserve had on each biological and socioeconomic indicator (Table 2) by comparing trends across time and treatments since reserve implementation [33, 34, 44]. To perform difference-in-differences, we regress the indicator of interest on a dummy variable for treatment, a dummy variable for years, and the interaction term between these with a multiple linear regression of the form: Where year-level fixed effects capturing a temporal trend are represented by γ t Year t , and βZone i captures the difference between reserve ( Zone = 1) and control ( Zone = 0) sites.…”

Do marine reserves increase prey for California sea lions and Pacific harbor seals?

“…The main goal was to protect the ecosystem in which abalone lives, in order to maintain the productivity of Haliotis fulgens and H . corrugata [9]. The largest of the two reserves, La Plana , covers 1.3 km 2 , while the second, Punta Prieta , comprises 0.7 km 2 (Fig 2A) [10].…”

Sistem Informasi Strategi Pemasaran Produk dengan Metode Market Basket Analysis dan Sales Forecasting: Swalayan Kota Makassar

“…al. (2017) tentang web interaktif untuk memilih penanda yang akurat kombinasi data omics yang dapat diakses secara online melalui halaman http://combiroc.eu/ , (2) penelitian yang dilakukan olehVillaseñor-Derbez, et. al.…”