Habitat Protection Indexes - new monitoring measures for the conservation of threatened marine habitats

Requisites:

Code is based on R version 3.6.0, drafted using RStudio Version 1.3.1073 – “Giant Goldenrod” (Linux).

The code relies on several packages that need to be installed for it to function properly. We are using the package renv to ensure compatibility, on first use, please run renv::restore() in your machine to ensure you’ll install and download all packages in the needed versions.

Data download:

Please download the following datasets, and store them in the Data_original folder, each within a unique subfolder, except for habitats, where all shapefiles should be stored together within the same subfolder named habitats.

Data_original Folder Structure:

habitats

eez_land

eez

mpas

ocean

Datasets to be added:

Name Source/Website Date accessed Version
World Database on Protected Areas UNEP-WCMC and IUCN (2021), Protected Planet: The World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA)/The Global Database on Protected Areas Management Effectiveness (GD-PAME)] [On-line], May 2021, Cambridge, UK: UNEP-WCMC and IUCN. Available at: www.protectedplanet.net. January 2022 January 2022
World Database on Other Effective Area-Based Conservation Measures UNEP-WCMC and IUCN (2021), Protected Planet: The World Database on Other Effective Area-Based Conservation Measures (WDOECM] [On-line], May 2021, Cambridge, UK: UNEP-WCMC and IUCN. Available at: www.protectedplanet.net. January 2022 January 2022
eez_land (Union of EEZs and countries) Flanders Marine Institute (2020). Union of the ESRI Country shapefile and the Exclusive Economic Zones (version 3). Available online at https://www.marineregions.org/. https://doi.org/10.14284/403. December 2020 Version 3
EEZs Flanders Marine Institute (2019). Maritime Boundaries Geodatabase, version 11. Available online at https://www.marineregions.org/. https://doi.org/10.14284/382. March 2021 Version 11
Cold Corals Freiwald A, Rogers A, Hall-Spencer J, Guinotte JM, Davies AJ, Yesson C, Martin CS, Weatherdon LV (2018). Global distribution of cold-water corals (version 5.0). Fifth update to the dataset in Freiwald et al. (2004) by UNEP-WCMC, in collaboration with Andre Freiwald and John Guinotte. Cambridge (UK): UNEP-WCMC. Data DOI: https://doi.org/10.34892/72×9-rt61 January 2022 Version 5.1
Warm-water Corals UNEP-WCMC, WorldFish Centre, WRI, TNC (2018). Global distribution of warm-water coral reefs, compiled from multiple sources including the Millennium Coral Reef Mapping Project. Version 4.0. Includes contributions from IMaRS-USF and IRD (2005), IMaRS-USF (2005) and Spalding et al. (2001). Cambridge (UK): UNEP-WCMC. Data DOI: https://doi.org/10.34892/t2wk-5t34 January 2022 Version 4.1
Knolls and Seamounts Yesson C, Clark MR, Taylor M, Rogers AD (2011). The global distribution of seamounts based on 30-second bathymetry data. Deep Sea Research Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers 58: 442-453. doi: 10.1016/j.dsr.2011.02.004. Data URL: http://data.unep-wcmc.org/datasets/41 March 2021 Version 1.0
Mangroves Bunting P., Rosenqvist A., Lucas R., Rebelo L-M., Hilarides L., Thomas N., Hardy A., Itoh T., Shimada M. and Finlayson C.M. (2018). The Global Mangrove Watch – a New 2010 Global Baseline of Mangrove Extent. Remote Sensing 10(10): 1669. doi: 10.3390/rs1010669. December 2020 GMW 2016
Saltmarshes Mcowen C, Weatherdon LV, Bochove J, Sullivan E, Blyth S, Zockler C, Stanwell-Smith D, Kingston N, Martin CS, Spalding M, Fletcher S (2017). A global map of saltmarshes. Biodiversity Data Journal 5: e11764. Paper DOI: https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.5.e11764; Data DOI: https://doi.org/10.34892/07vk-ws51 January 2022 Version 6.1
Seagrasses UNEP-WCMC, Short FT (2020). Global distribution of seagrasses (version 7.0). Seventh update to the data layer used in Green and Short (2003). Cambridge (UK): UNEP-WCMC. Data DOI: https://doi.org/10.34892/x6r3-d211 January 2022 Version 7.1
Ocean https://www.naturalearthdata.com/downloads/110m-physical-vectors/110m-ocean/ December 2020 Version 4.1.0

Please note that folders named Data_processed and Data_final will be added in the workflow.

Workflow

The full workflow can be reproduced by sourcing the 01_Workflow.R script in the main folder. The script sources the several steps to calculate the indexes. If wanted, one can run each step separately using the scripts in the Scripts folder, beware that these are dependent on each other and are built to be run sequentially.

We also use parallel processing to increase speed of computational demanding spatial calculations. Use with caution on your own machine. We strongly suggest to run the workflow on a smaller subset of data for testing. Results are stored in the Data_final folder, as comma separated value tables.

Methodology

For each habitat we calculate the percentage protection of that habitat both globally and per country. Please refer to the paper for the full methodology.

Contacts

Code written by Joy Kumagai (joy.kumagai@senckenberg.de) and Fabio Favoretto (favoretto@uabcs.mx). Please contact us if you have any questions or open an issue on github.