Zonae Cogito is a free software package that couples Marxan with a MapWindow GIS interface to provide practitioners with an easy to use GIS to support Marxan analysis. In addition to providing a method for visualizing Marxan output, Zonae Cogito extends the basic Marxan functionality to better support an iterative and interactive design process. Zonae Cogito introduces the ability to modify and...

Marxan is the most widely used conservation planning software in the world and is designed for solving complex conservation planning problems in landscapes and seascapes. In this paper we describe a substantial extension of Marxan called Marxan with Zones, a decision support tool that provides landuse zoning options in geographical regions for biodiversity conservation. We describe new function...

The Government of Madagascar plans to increase marine protected area coverage by over one million hectares. To assist this process, we compare four methods for marine spatial planning of Madagascar's west coast. Input data for each method was drawn from the same variables: fishing pressure, exposure to climate change, and biodiversity (habitats, species distributions, biological richness, and b...

1. Protected area networks for river ecosystems must account for the highly connected nature of river habitats and the fact that conditions in distant locations can influence downstream habitats and biota. We used Marxan conservation planning software to address the unique constraints of reserve design in river ecosystems and structure a reserve network to overcome key challenges to freshwater ...

The development of offshore wind energy and other competing interests in sea space are a major incentive for designating marine and coastal areas for specific human activities. Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) considers human activities at sea in a more integrated way by analysing and designating spatial and temporal distributions of human activities based on ecological, economic and social targ...

Marxan is software that delivers decision support for reserve system design. Marxan was initially designed to solve a particular class of reserve design problems known as the minimum set problem (see Box 1.1) where the goal is to achieve some minimum representation of biodiversity features for the smallest possible cost. Marxan helps users to determine the possible contr...

Aquifer ecosystems provide a range of important services including clean drinking water. These ecosystems, which are largely inaccessible to humans, comprise a distinct invertebrate fauna (stygofauna), which is characterized by narrow distributions, high levels of endemism and cryptic species. Although being under enormous anthropogenic pressure, aquifers have rarely been included in conservati...

We integrated coral reef connectivity data for the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico into a conservation decision-making framework for designing a regional scale marine protected area (MPA) network that provides insight into ecological and political contexts. We used an ocean circulation model and regional coral reef data to simulate eight spawning events from 2008-2011, applying a maximum 30-day pe...