Abstract
BackgroundAnthropogenic degradation of marine ecosystems is widely accepted as a major social-ecological problem. The growing urgency to better manage marine ecosystems has led to the increasing application of ‘spatial management measures’ including marine protected areas, sectoral (e.g. fishery) closures, and marine spatial planning. However, the designation of varied spatial management regimes is just the first step; achievement of objectives relies upon effective implementation, monitoring, evaluation and adaptation. Despite spatial management being a core component of the marine management portfolio, to our knowledge, there is no systematic overview of the evidence on methodologies available, and employed, to monitor and evaluate their effectiveness across social, economic and ecological outcomes.MethodsThis systematic map will examine existing evidence describing methodologies for monitoring the effects, and evaluating the effectiveness, of marine spatial management across ecological, social and economic outcomes. Our aim is to provide a resource for decision-makers, primarily in the UK but also internationally, that supports effective marine management, and to describe the current evidence base. Identification and evaluation of relevant studies will therefore be restricted to coastal countries identified by our Stakeholder Group as being relevant to the UK, and searches will be restricted to the period 2009 to 2019 to align with the current UK policy context. Searches for relevant grey and academic literature, published in English, will be conducted in four bibliographic search engines, Google Scholar, 38 organisational websites and one specialist data repository. Eligibility screening will be conducted first at title and abstract level, and then at full text. Coding and meta-data extraction from eligible studies will include: bibliographic information, general information about the spatial management measure studied, and methodological information on the monitoring and evaluation undertaken. Consistency checking amongst reviewers will be undertaken during screening, coding and data extraction phases. The outcome of the systematic map will be a database that displays the meta-data of identified relevant studies. Findings will be presented in a descriptive report detailing the evaluation approaches and analytical methodologies employed, and data collection methods applied and/or data required by relevant studies to inform evaluations on the effectiveness of marine spatial management measures.
Highlights
Anthropogenic degradation of marine ecosystems is widely accepted as a major socialecological problem that could undermine the ability of the oceans to provide fundamental ecosystem services (e.g. [3])
Spatial management measures typically comprise marine protected areas (MPAs) for biodiversity conservation, sectoral closures to mitigate the effects of their activities and ensure sustainability, and marine spatial plans (‘marine plans’) to integrate social, economic and environmental considerations into proactive management of marine activities
Understanding what methodologies are available, and how they are being applied, to monitor and evaluate spatial management effectiveness is critical to ensure cost-effective management and identify priorities for future research to inform and improve management. To inform this evidence need, we will conduct a systematic map on how the effects of marine spatial management can be determined and what evaluations of effectiveness are undertaken across social, ecological and economic outcomes in coastal countries identified by the Stakeholder Group as being relevant to the UK
Summary
The systematic map has been developed in accordance with the RepOrting standards for Systematic Evidence Syntheses (ROSES) for systematic map protocols [28] (Additional file 2) and the Collaboration for Environmental Evidence Guidelines and Standards for Evidence Synthesis [29]. Estimating the comprehensiveness of the search Scoping search results (Additional file 3: Table S2) were compared against a test library of 15 publications of known relevance to the review to test and refine the comprehensiveness of the search (see Additional file 3: Table S3 for full list of benchmark articles) These articles were selected by the Review Team, with feedback from the Stakeholder Group, to represent ecological, social and/or economic evaluations of each of the three spatial management types (MPAs, fishery closures, marine plans) considered in this review. Retrieved literature from organisational websites and supplementary searches will be screened separately and articles deemed relevant at full text will be combined with other records prior to compilation of the systematic map. But specific, cut off points will be agreed at this meeting to identify boundaries (number of studies) at which a topic will be considered as either lacking evidence and being poorly studied, or as having sufficient studies to allow for more meaningful exploration of the monitoring and evaluation methodologies they employ
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