Reexamining the science of marine protected areas: Linking knowledge to action
Abstract
Marine protected areas (MPAs) are often implemented to conserve or restore species,
fisheries, habitats, ecosystems, and ecological functions and services; buffer against
the ecological effects of climate change; and alleviate poverty in coastal communities.
Scientific research provides valuable insights into the social and ecological impacts
of MPAs, as well as the factors that shape these impacts, providing useful guidance
or "rules of thumb" for science-based MPA policy. Both ecological and social factors
foster effective MPAs, including substantial coverage of representative habitats and
oceanographic conditions; diverse size and spacing; protection of habitat bottlenecks;
participatory decisionmaking arrangements; bounded and contextually appropriate resource
use rights; active and accountable monitoring and enforcement systems; and accessible
conflict resolution mechanisms. For MPAs to realize their full potential as a tool
for ocean governance, further advances in policy-relevant MPA science are required.
These research frontiers include MPA impacts on nontarget and wide-ranging species
and habitats; impacts beyond MPA boundaries, on ecosystem services, and on resource-dependent
human populations, as well as potential scale mismatches of ecosystem service flows.
Explicitly treating MPAs as "policy experiments" and employing the tools of impact
evaluation holds particular promise as a way for policy-relevant science to inform
and advance science-based MPA policy. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/6510Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1111/j.1755-263X.2011.00207.xPublication Info
Fox, HE; Mascia, MB; Basurto, X; Costa, A; Glew, L; Heinemann, D; ... White, AT (2012). Reexamining the science of marine protected areas: Linking knowledge to action. Conservation Letters, 5(1). pp. 1-10. 10.1111/j.1755-263X.2011.00207.x. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/6510.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Show full item recordScholars@Duke
Xavier Basurto
Truman and Nellie Semans/Alex Brown & Sons Associate Professor
I am interested in the fundamental question of how groups (human and non-human) can
find ways to self-organize, cooperate, and engage in successful collective action
for the benefit of the common good. To do this I strive to understand how the institutions
(formal and informal rules and norms) that govern social behavior, interplay with
biophysical variables to shape social-ecological systems. What kind of institutions
are better able to govern complex-adaptive systems? and how can societies (la

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