ABSTRACT
Particularly in recent years, geographical information systems (GIS) and other geoinformatics technologies have come to play an increasing role in managing marine and coastal areas, especially where environmental and socioeconomic factors need to be balanced and integrated within a comprehensive framework. The objective of these geospatial applications is to allow coastal managers, policy analysts, natural and social scientists and planners to make better informed, evidence-based decisions, as well as helping identify and address problems and recognize opportunities that might exist within the marine environment. Example application areas include assessment of vulnerability of coastal communities to flooding hazards (Bagdanavičiūtė et al., 2015; Seenath et al., 2016), planning restoration of species such as eelgrass (de Jonge et al., 2000), understanding non-point source pollution (Shen et al., 2013), managing marine protected areas (MPAs) (Gormley et al., 2014; Levine and Feinholz, 2015; Habtemariam and Fang, 2016) and tracking potential conflicts within an environment, for example, marine mammals and industrial developments and activities (Kuletz et al., 2015; Cavazzi
CONTENTS
8.1 Introduction ................................................................................................ 175 8.2 Marine Management ................................................................................. 176
8.2.1 Ecosystem-Based Management and Marine Spatial Planning .... 178 8.2.2 Coastal Management ..................................................................... 181 8.2.3 Ocean Management ....................................................................... 183 8.2.4 Ocean Zoning ................................................................................. 184
8.3 Conservation Management ...................................................................... 186 8.4 Resources Management ............................................................................ 192 8.5 Summary, Conclusions and Future Plans .............................................. 194 Acknowledgements ............................................................................................ 196 References ............................................................................................................. 196
and Dutton, 2016) and marine spatial planning (MSP) (Gimpel et al., 2015). Although comprehensive spatial management schemes have long existed within terrestrial environments (Harris and Elmes, 1993), the application of planning and management concepts and instruments to the marine sector is still relatively new and evolving rapidly, and the use of geoinformatics to support these endeavours is likewise still in its comparative infancy.
