A hierarchical framework to aid biodiversity assessment for coastal zone management and marine protected area selection

The need to rapidly and accurately identify areas for protection and conservation in the marine environment has been highlighted as of critical importance. Managers require timely and cost-effective techniques to obtain biodiversity information at appropriate scales and resolutions aligned with management objectives and stakeholders requirements. In this paper, a two-stage, multi-level data collection framework is presented that will aid managers to focus on what marine biodiversity collection techniques will meet their individual jurisdictional needs. The framework begins with an integrated planning process (objective setting, stakeholder identification, and sensitivity and gap analyses), that leads to a hierarchical approach for selecting biodiversity assessment techniques that will gather required marine biodiversity data. Complexity of scale and resolution increases as one progress’s through the hierarchical levels of Stage II. The utility of using a hierarchical framework is that it surmounts the problem that no single technique can quantify all biological attributes necessary for management outcomes. Also, the user enters the framework at a hierarchical level that meets their requirements thus removing the collection of redundant data. Ultimately, the rapid assessment framework is based on the efficient and sufficient assessment of marine biodiversity.