Definition of Environmental Units of Analysis: alternative method as a basis for environmental zoning of marine-coastal ecosystems

Abstract

The purpose of environmental zoning is to improve environmental management and the sustainable management of the coastal and marine ecosystems. This zoning can be performed by using methods such as participative zoning, COLMIZC, and the method used in the Decision Support System (DSS) called “Software MARXAN”. The methods present advantages and disadvantages. However, they all require an input of detailed primary or secondary data, and biotic and physical information regarding the ecosystem. Thus, this study employs a method that was the result of the analysis of different methods, and that enables suitable environmental zoning of the marine-coastal ecosystem (e.g. mangroves, seagrasses, coral reef, etc.) without detailed biophysical information. Its main characteristic is the definition Environmental Units of
Analysis (EUA), as units that have been considered as homogenous regions that can be defined from different aspects such as ecosystem size or distribution, and socioeconomic and cultural aspects (Ospino-Sepulveda et al., 2017b). Having defined the EUA, it is possible to map specific ecosystem and consider other important environmental elements, which sometimes are not considered important when using other methods. As a result of this work, 14 EUA were obtained in La Guajira and 14 EUA in Chocó for marine-coastal areas in the Colombian Caribbean. The application of socio-economic, socio-cultural and biotic criteria to EUA defined zones for protection, restoration, and development of sustainable economic activities. We hope that the method adopted in this work will, in the future, be considered as an alternative for the environmental zoning of ecosystems marine-coastal areas.