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Designing Representative MPAs in a Structured Environment

Nic Bax and Alan Williams

CSIRO Marine Research, HOBART, AUSTRALIA

Theme: TH2

Knowledge of the spatial structure of marine ecosystems and its dependence on time is required before Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) can be considered to be representative. However spatial structure can be measured on many different scales. We illustrate this for the south-east Australian continental shelf ecosystem that is structured by: oceanography; geology; plankton, invertebrate and fish communities; and human activity at different scales in the space and time domains. We conclude that the design of representative MPAs first requires a clear enunciation of the management aims so that suitable spatial and temporal scales can be identified. Once the appropriate scales have been determined, a method of weighing the importance of different ecosystem attributes will be needed as these attributes will act at different spatial and temporal scales.