CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2021
| Author | Gottlieb, Rebecca Lucinda |
|---|---|
| Title | An Ecological Coherence Assessment of the Wider Caribbean Region MPA Network |
| Summary | Marine protected areas (MPAs) are an area-based management tool that serve as the cornerstone for marine conservation. There has been a recent shift from establishing MPAs on an ad hoc basis to establishing MPA networks, partly driven by Aichi Biodiversity Target 11, which called for 10% coastal and marine coverage by 2020. Ecological coherence assessments can help determine if a group of individually established MPAs can retroactively be considered ecologically coherent, or if an intentionally established MPA network is ecologically coherent. This research, focusing on the Wider Caribbean Region, provides the first ecological coherence assessment of an MPA network outside of European waters. The ecological coherence of the Wider Caribbean Region MPA network was assessed by running fourteen tests to measure four main criteria: representativity, replicability, connectivity, and adequacy. Novel methodologies were presented for two of these tests: the human impact test and the ecologically important areas test. The results of the tests were aggregated using a methodology that incorporated uncertainty in the methods, data, and targets. The results showed that the network was likely to have achieved ecological coherence in terms of representativity, unlikely to have achieved ecological coherence in terms of replicability and connectivity, and very unlikely to have achieved ecological coherence in terms of adequacy. To get closer to ecological coherence, the region should focus on increasing no-take MPAs or zones and increasing the number of large MPAs. Overall, this assessment concluded that the Wider Caribbean Network is very unlikely to have achieved ecological coherence. |
| Supervisor | Anthony, Brandon |
| Department | Environment Sciences and Policy MSc |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2021/gottlieb_rebecca.pdf |
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