Exploring the effect of the spatial scale of fishery management

For any spatially explicit management, determining the appropriate spatial scale of management decisions is critical to success at achieving a given management goal. Specifically, managers must decide how much to subdivide a given managed region: from implementing a uniform approach across the regio...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of theoretical biology 2016-02, Vol.390, p.14-22
Main Authors: Takashina, Nao, Baskett, Marissa L.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Algorithms
Animals
Bioeconomic model
Biomass
Conservation of Natural Resources - economics
Conservation of Natural Resources - methods
Ecosystem
Fisheries - classification
Fisheries - economics
Fisheries - methods
Fishes - growth & development
Management scale
Marine
Marine reserves
Models, Biological
Models, Economic
Population Dynamics
Species Specificity
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:For any spatially explicit management, determining the appropriate spatial scale of management decisions is critical to success at achieving a given management goal. Specifically, managers must decide how much to subdivide a given managed region: from implementing a uniform approach across the region to considering a unique approach in each of one hundred patches and everything in between. Spatially explicit approaches, such as the implementation of marine spatial planning and marine reserves, are increasingly used in fishery management. Using a spatially explicit bioeconomic model, we quantify how the management scale affects optimal fishery profit, biomass, fishery effort, and the fraction of habitat in marine reserves. We find that, if habitats are randomly distributed, the fishery profit increases almost linearly with the number of segments. However, if habitats are positively autocorrelated, then the fishery profit increases with diminishing returns. Therefore, the true optimum in management scale given cost to subdivision depends on the habitat distribution pattern. •We explore the effect of spatial scale of fishery management in a bioeconomic model.•Finer spatial scales of management can significantly improve optimal fishery profit.•Profit increases nearly linearly with management scale for uncorrelated landscapes.•Profit has diminishing returns with management scale for autocorrelated landscapes.•An intermediate optimal management scale is more likely for autocorrelated landscapes.
ISSN:0022-5193
1095-8541
DOI:10.1016/j.jtbi.2015.11.005