Biogeographic Assessments: Integration of Ecology and Gis to Define and Evaluate Marine Protected Area Boundaries

The world’s marine resources face multiple stresses from both human activities and natural environmental perturbations. As pressures on marine resources continue to increase, it has become evident that data required to make informed management decisions, bounded by policy aspects, are either lacking or not easily accessed (Battista and Monaco 2004). Information technologies provide a suite of capabilities that can be used to organize, visualize, analyze, and conduct integrated assessments of geographic data in support of the world’s estuarine, coastal, and marine habitats and associated living marine resources (Parker 1988; Haddad and Michener 1991). However, to make maximum use of geographic information system (GIS), remote sensing, and database management technologies, a clear process must be implemented to consistently and efficiently collect, ingest, and analyze spatial and temporal ecological data sets.