Conservation assessments using CLUZ and MARXAN

A step-by-step guide written by Bob Smith

Introduction

These web pages provide a step-by-step guide to using CLUZ and MARXAN for designing protected area (PA) systems and other ecological networks based, on a systematic conservation planning approach. Before going through this guide, I recommend that you complete the CLUZ tutorials to get a basic understanding of how the software works. These pages will build on the information in the tutorial and will explain more about each aspect of the different processes that are involved.

An explanation of terms

This CLUZ guide uses a number of terms that need to be defined to avoid confusion. This is especially because some conservation planning groups use the same words to describe different things.

Conservation landscapes and seascapes: Systematic conservation planning involves producing a zoning system for your planning region that identifies how the land and water should be managed. These systems often involve establishing new state-run PAs but a range of other conservation areas can be established, such as private- and communally managed PAs and natural resource harvesting areas.

In these pages I will use the term conservation landscape as a shorthand to describe these final zoning plans, but please remember that most of the information in these pages also applies to seascapes.

Conservation assessment: A conservation assessment is a short-term activity for identifying spatially-explicit priority areas for conservation action, so designing a conservation landscape with CLUZ and MARXAN is a conservation assessment. Conservation planning has been defined as a long-term process that involves combining the conservation assessment with an implementation strategy (Knight et al., 2006).

Conservation features: Conservation features are the elements that you want to protect in your conservation landscape. Most assessments include data on species and habitat types but you can include a whole range of other features (see the Select your conservation features section for more details).

Targets: The key to systematic conservation planning is that it sets how much of each conservation feature should be included in the conservation landscape. These amounts are named targets so, for example, you might specify that the targets for your conservation seascape include 1000ha of sea grass and habitat for 200 green turtles (see the Set your representation targets section for more details).

Unfortunately, different planning groups use different terms and some people use the word "target" to mean what is defined here as a "conservation feature". So, you need to be careful when reading the conservation planning literature.

Portfolio: This is a term used to describe a collection of planning units. You can use MARXAN and CLUZ to identify portfolios that meet all of the targets, and so help develop the conservation landscape.

Before you start

The step-by-step guide describes how to input your data into CLUZ and run MARXAN. However, before doing this you will need to make a series of fundamental decisions about the design of your conservation planning system. In particular, you will need to go through the following five stages:

• A) Define your planning region
  
  
• B) Select which conservation features should be included in the system
  
  
• C) Define your planning units
  
  
• D) Decide on what your planning unit cost values should represent
  
  
• E) Set your representation targets

The 12 steps to undertaking a conservation assessment using CLUZ

Once you have decided on the design of your conservation planning system you can now go through the following 12 steps:

1) Produce your planning unit theme

2) Create your blank CLUZ tables

3) Input the planning unit cost data

4) Import your conservation feature distribution data

5) Set the conserved and excluded planning units

6) Set the targets

7) Set your target penalty factors

8) Lock planning units together with boundary cost values

9) Set your boundary length modifier value

10) Conduct a trial run in MARXAN

11) Inspect the results are modify the parameters

12) Produce the final output

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank a number of people for helping to inspire and develop these web pages. First, I would like to thank all of the people who have provided feedback on using CLUZ for conservation planning and commented on these web pages. These include Yolanda Barrios, Annette Huggins, Andrew Knight, Barney Long, Mervyn Lotter, Mathieu Rouget, Ian Rushworth, Elsabe van der Westhuizen and a number of CLUZ training workshop participants. I would also like to thank Ian Ball, Hugh Possingham and Matt Watts at the University of Queensland, the developers of MARXAN. Their support and advice has been invaluable in the development of CLUZ and these web pages.

These web pages contain a number of references to key articles but it is not a definitive review of the literature. The pages also include ideas that I have gleaned from a number of colleagues and these have been identified in the text. So, I would also like to thank Mandy Driver, Paul Eastwood, Mandy Lombard and Hugh Possingham for providing these ideas.

This work was funded by the Darwin Initiative for the Survival of Species and I am very grateful for their support. It forms part of a DICE project entitled "Transnational conservation planning in the Maputaland centre of endemism, southern Africa".