Document Type

Article

Publication Date

4-2018

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0195760

Publication Title

PLoS One

Volume

13

Issue

4

Pages

e0195760 (14 pages)

Abstract

Large marine protected areas (LMPAs) are increasingly being established and have a high profile in marine conservation. LMPAs are expected to achieve multiple objectives, and because of their size are postulated to avoid trade-offs that are common in smaller MPAs. However, evaluations across multiple outcomes are lacking. We used a systematic approach to code several social and ecological outcomes of 12 LMPAs. We found evidence of three types of trade-offs: trade-offs between different ecological resources (supply trade-offs); trade-offs between ecological resource conditions and the well-being of resource users (supply-demand trade-offs); and trade-offs between the well-being outcomes of different resource users (demand trade-offs). We also found several divergent outcomes that were attributed to influences beyond the scope of the LMPA. We suggest that despite their size, trade-offs can develop in LMPAs and should be considered in planning and design. LMPAs may improve their performance across multiple social and ecological objectives if integrated with larger-scale conservation efforts. © 2018 Davies et al.

Rights

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Original Publication Citation

Davies, T. E., Epstein, G., Aguilera, S. E., Brooks, C. M., Cox, M., Evans, L. S., . . . Ban, N. C. (2018). Assessing trade-offs in large marine protected areas. PloS One, 13(4), e0195760. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0195760

ORCID

/0000-0002-4425-9378 (Maxwell)

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