Evaluating tradeoffs among ecosystem services to inform marine spatial planning

Abstract

a b s t r a c tA central challenge for natural resource management is developing rigorous yet practical approaches for balancing the costs and benefits of diverse human uses of ecosystems. Economic theory has a long history of evaluating tradeoffs in returns from different assets to identify optimal investment strategies. There has been recent progress applying this framework to the delivery of ecosystem services in land use planning. However, despite growing national and international interest in marine spatial planning, there is a lack of parallel frameworks in the marine realm. This paper reviews an ecosystem service tradeoff analysis framework and provides a more comprehensive synthesis for how it can be applied to marine spatial planning and marine ecosystem-based management. A tradeoff analysis approach can reveal inferior management options, demonstrate the benefits of comprehensive planning for multiple, interacting services over managing single services, and identify 'compatible' services that provide winwin management options.

Multi-objective spatial tools to inform maritime spatial planning in the Adriatic Sea

“…The presented MES model is a first step towards a wider MES analysis in the Adriatic Sea. The ongoing MSP implementation process in the study area requires ES frameworks for trade-off and synergy analysis (Lester et al, 2013) on sea use sectors, to better understand the direct and indirect benefits provided by ecosystem services and their socio-economic dimension. This is especially important in the Northern Adriatic Sea, where space limitation induces trade-offs among environmental components and anthropogenic activities.…”

A review on trade-off analysis of ecosystem services for sustainable land-use management

“…Lester et al (2013) conducted a review on the ecosystem services trade-off analysis framework that based on economic theory, and summarized six common types of ecosystem service interactions based on the insights gained from frontier shapes, including non-interacting services, direct trade-off, convex trade-off, concave trade-off, non-monotonic concave trade-off, and backward S trade-off. All the frontier shapes focus on two dimensions, which are the easiest ways to visualize, while the concept and logit can be applied to trade-offs in multiple dimensions as well .…”

Offshore aquaculture in the United States: Untapped potential in need of smart policy

“…This includes statelevel marine plans implemented in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Oregon and a 2010 executive order by President Obama establishing a National Ocean Policy that, among other priorities, called for regional planning bodies responsible for developing coastal and marine spatial plans for each of nine regions. Although the science needed to define such plans is increasingly available (14,15), progress toward this goal has been highly variable. Only the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic have implemented plans, with funding and coordination challenges and lack of political will limiting progress in other regions.…”