Evaluating the protection of diverse and representative coastal and marine habitats within California’s Marine Protected Area (MPA) network

The Marine Life Protection Act of 1999 endeavors to protect the “natural diversity and abundance of marine life” along the California coastline and its nearshore environments, with the goal of promoting marine habitats, ecosystems, and marine natural heritage. In pursuit of informing these goals, substantial advances in Marine Protected Area (MPA) habitat measuring have occurred since the initial MPA planning process, including the use of remote sensing data. However, there is still a need for statewide visual understanding and statistical analysis of the distribution of habitat types within MPAs. Our team will integrate existing spatial habitat datasets to generate map layers for defined habitat types, and use those layers to analyze the habitat makeup inside MPAs, compared to habitat type and variation outside of the network. We will analyse how these different habitat types are protected, and standardize the method of calculating the composition of habitat within each MPA. Our findings will culminate in a written report summarizing this process, and will include effective visualization of key insights through tables, figures, and maps. This report will be read and utilized by researchers involved in the decadal evaluation of California’s MPA network, state partners at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the California Ocean Protection Council, and ecologists.