DSTs that use interactive software including maps, models, communication modules, and additional components can help solve problems that are too complex and multi-faceted to solve using human intuition or conventional approaches alone. Used properly, planning tools can:

• Save time, energy, and resources
• Guide users through difficult steps of decisionmaking processes so they can quickly move from data analysis to final decisions
• Repeat analyses with relative ease and reduce redundancy by leveraging the work of others
• Reduce requirements for human expertise
• Help users explore a wider range of alternatives
• Document decisions about inputs and parameters
• Increase the understanding of planning requirements and limitations for multiple sectors in the planning process

Download a copy of the guide here!

A working group from academia, federal government, First Nations, industry, provincial government, and NGOs volunteered to revise the draft Marine Ecosystem-based Management (EBM) Principles that were developed during the Marine EBM Gaps Workshop of March 2010 in Sidney, BC.

The goal of creating this document was to provide a more applied elaboration of marine EBM than existing high-level lists of requirements and considerations. The group developed a brief, clear, and understandable set of principles describing the step-wise context, purpose, and process of effective EBM implementation, with supporting elaborations. The Sidney Consensus thus provides a basis for consistent legislation, planning, regulation, enforcement, monitoring, and adaptive management of human activities.

View the 2007 workshop summary report here.

Also, visit our Marxan wikipage, for a number of resources including training updates, FAQs, peer-reviewed papers, and technical/NGO/government reports using Marxan, as well as an interactive version of the Marxan User Manual.

And please feel free to add comments to help us improve these documents!

For other decision support tool resources, clickhere.

As Fisheries and Oceans Canada moved towards implementing Integrated Management in the North and Central Coasts of British Columbia, several options were evaluated for the placement of administrative boundaries. This report reviewed three proposed boundaries that span the Central and North Coasts, and made note of one other in the Central Coast (Figure 1). From these inputs two recommendations were developed:

1. The North – Central LOMA should extend from the Alaskan boarder southward to the vicinity of Seymour Narrows, but should not include Bute or Toba inlets. Brooks Peninsula should represent the southern boundary on the west coast Vancouver Island.  The base of the shelf slope should be the western boundary and the coastal watersheds should represent the eastern boundary.

1. The deep sea offshore region should be treated as one contiguous LOMA. It would span all of BC’s deep offshore waters from Alaska to Washington State, and extend from the base of the shelf slope seaward to the 200 nautical mile limit of the Economic Exclusions Zone.

During the study it was recognized that any boundary in the marine realm, no matter how well placed, will contain human activities and ecosystem features and processes that are connected to areas outside of these artificial lines. Consequently, we suggest that regardless of where Fisheries and Oceans decides to delineate its North – Central Integrated Management area, it is imperative that there be administrative mechanisms that link to adjacent planning areas.

In this paper, an analysis of the literature around governance, collaboration, complexity, the role of science in society, and new thinking about resource management was undertaken to show that collaborations such as PacMARA might actually be better at asking and answering the questions needed to inform an ecosystem-based management approach.