g., Should the % of shoreline linear features be calculated for each ecoregion? Or for the coast overall? What happens if % is high in just one region? How high is too high?). Human

use targets were set based on the human use working group recommendation of conducting analyses where the use declines Anti-diabetic Compound Library by 5% for each scenario, and the metric for that use depends upon the sector. Therefore scenarios consisting of these five target values: 95%, 90%, 85%, 80% and 75% were run for each of the six human use sectors. Sensitivity tests uncovered a problem with the initial plan of using two different-sized planning units (smaller nearshore and larger offshore) in the same Marxan analysis.

Marxan solutions for runs using a BLM equal to zero, area as cost, and a single feature filling all planning units equally but targeted at 30%, significantly favoured the smaller planning units (Fig. 2). The problem was resolved by using only one size of planning units, although the trade-off was increased computing time. Additional details of how the problem was discovered and http://www.selleckchem.com/products/BIBW2992.html solved are provided in the Marxan Good Practices Handbook, Version 2 (Box 8.1) [22]. Other calibration tests included number of iterations, boundary length modifier, and feature penalty. We determined that 750 million or 1 billion iterations effectively and efficiently produced solutions that adequately considered the solution space (Fig. 3A). The ecological runs used 1 billion iterations while the human use runs used 750 million iterations because there were more ecological features than human use features, thus

warranting more iterations. The BLM for the ecological analyses was determined by calibration and visual inspection of several options and consensus decision by the Project Team (Fig. 3B). http://www.selleck.co.jp/products/MLN-2238.html BLMs of 0, 750, and 2500 were chosen to illustrate results with no BLM and possible solutions to the range of “What if…?” scenarios that might be recommended by planners. The human use runs used a BLM of 1000, accepted by the human use data working group as the most appropriate BLM suitable for use across all six sectors. A consistent feature penalty factor of 8 was used for ecological features, and 500 for human use features. Ecological data and Marxan results show the importance of nearshore and continental shelf regions. Overlaying all ecological datasets (i.e., displaying data richness, Fig. 4) shows that much of the available data hugs the shoreline, likely the result of a combination of survey effort and actual elevated biodiversity along the nearshore and on the continental shelf. The various ecological Marxan results – low, medium, and high targets (expert [Fig. 5] and Project Team derived [Fig.