Assessing and optimizing the effectiveness of protected areas along China’s coastal region: A social-ecological protected area network study

Effectiveness of protected areas (EPA) evaluation has been used to measure the effectiveness of existing protected areas (PAs) and to identify prioritized and inefficient PAs. However, the current EPA evaluation remains incomplete, primarily due either to the scale of evaluation focusing on only iso...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of environmental management 2024-01, Vol.349, p.119338-119338, Article 119338
Main Authors: Zhao, Ye, Qian, Wenqi, Liu, Xinyu, Wu, Chao
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Coastal region
Conservation gaps
Effectiveness of protected areas
Protected area network
Social-ecological connectivity
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Summary:Effectiveness of protected areas (EPA) evaluation has been used to measure the effectiveness of existing protected areas (PAs) and to identify prioritized and inefficient PAs. However, the current EPA evaluation remains incomplete, primarily due either to the scale of evaluation focusing on only isolated PAs without considering network connectivity or to the difficulty of balancing social and ecological synergy in practice. To address this issue, we proposed a social-ecological connectivity pathway to maximize the evaluation and optimization of EPA in a coastal region: first, we selected social and ecological indicators for habitat suitability evaluation and simulated the protected area network (PAN); second, we evaluated the rationality of network connectivity; and ultimately, we identified conservation gaps to the post-2020 global biodiversity target. Considering the complexity of coastal ecosystems, we selected the four coastal cities of the Shandong Peninsula, China as a case study. We find that (1) the social-ecological PAN consists of 370 primary corridors and 110 secondary corridors; there are 12 cross-ecosystem types in the identified PANs, three of which span marine to terrestrial ecosystems, while the remaining nine span terrestrial interior ecosystems; (2) 66 nodes were identified as spatial gaps; the benefit gap indicated that 51.75% of PAs were inefficiently protected but 48.25% were appropriately protected; regarding quantity gap, the marine PAs gap (25.41%) is much larger than the terrestrial PAs gap (15.80%), suggesting a possible priority in the marine PAs appropriately. Our study reveals that the EPA in the coastal region is currently weak and urgently needs to improve. Thus, we propose measures to optimize the EPA and suggest its potential application to other PAs in complex and vulnerable coastal regions. [Display omitted] •We propose a social-ecological protected area network connectivity approach in a coastal region.•Connecting PAs across ecosystems is of great value in improving the conservation EPA.•The gap between the number and scale of marine PAs is far -larger than that of terrestrial PAs.•There are three existing levels of conservation gaps in the post-2020 global biodiversity target.•The coastline area has large potential to achieve the 2030 targets.
ISSN:0301-4797
1095-8630
DOI:10.1016/j.jenvman.2023.119338