Marine Habitat Protection Indexes to understand the local and global conservation of marine habitats

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Joy A. Kumagai, SBiKF, Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Center, Frankfurt am Main, CA, Germany and Fabio Favoretto, Universidad autónoma de baja california sur, La Paz, Mexico

Background/Question/Methods
Area-based conservation tools such as marine protected areas and other effective area-based measures are critical to halt biodiversity loss, maintain the health of ecosystems and their contributions to people. Target 2 of the zero-order draft of the global biodiversity framework currently under negotiation proposes that at least 30% of the earth’s surface should be protected or conserved by 2030. To monitor the progress towards this target, two indexes were constructed to measure the extent of important marine habitats within protected areas (PAs) in a standardized, open-source, and reproducible way. Global spatial data on the extent of cold corals, warm water corals, knolls and seamounts, mangroves, saltmarshes, and seagrasses were intersected with the UNEP-WCMC protected areas database using a 1km2 raster grid for 246 jurisdictions. The global marine habitat protection index (GMHPI) was calculated by dividing the area of habitat within PAs within each jurisdiction divided by the total global area of that habitat and then averaging the resulting values across the habitats. The local marine habitat protection index (LMHPI) is the same calculation but divided by the total habitat area in a jurisdiction, rather than the global area. This work is under review and will be published soon.
Results/Conclusions
The LMHPI pinpoints the jurisdictions with the greatest opportunity to expand their own PAs, while the GMHPI showcases which jurisdictions contribute the most to the protection of these habitats globally. Australia, Canada, Mexico, Spain, and Indonesia, together contribute 15.8% of the average global protection of these marine and coastal habitats by extent. Out of 246 jurisdictions, six have a LMHPI value of 1, indicating that the entire extent of these habitats falls within PAs. Half the jurisdictions have a LMHPI value of less than 0.26, meaning that on average less than 26% of their habitats’ extent are within PAs. The jurisdictions which have the highest opportunity to expand PAs to meet a minimum threshold of 30% coverage of PAs and contribute immensely to the protection of these habitats globally were also evaluated, with the high seas having the greatest opportunity to do so. The reproducible and scalable workflow behind the indexes allows for others to transfer and adapt the indexes over space and time or add complementary national habitat datasets or terrestrial habitats. The indexes can be used to monitor the progress towards area-based targets and bring to the forefront the importance of conserving critical marine and coastal habitats.