Conservation in the Carolinian Ecoregion
An Ecoregional Assessment 2005

Sewee to Santee © TNC Staff

Conservation in the Carolinian Ecoregion Part1
Conservation in the Carolinian Ecoregion Part 2 - Maps
Conservation in the Carolinian Ecoregion Part 3 - Maps
Conservation in the Carolinian Ecoregion Part 4 - Maps
Conservation in the Carolinian Ecoregion Part 5 - Appendix
Due to size limitations, the assessment has been divided into 5 sections.

 Executive Summary

The purpose of this assessment of the Carolinian Ecoregion is to bring an enhanced focus to marine conservation and management in the region. To achieve this purpose, three products were developed: a spatial database of the region’s biodiversity and the factors that affect it, a decision-support framework to evaluate conservation and management alternatives, and a set of conservation areas that represent the region’s biodiversity. The assessment involved many partners in academia, state and federal agencies, and other nongovernmental organizations, as well as staff from all state chapters of The Nature Conservancy (TNC) in the region and TNC’s Global Marine Initiative. All the tools, data, and results used in the assessment are available in the accompanying CD-ROM to inform and support partner conservation and management efforts.

 The temperate estuaries, bays, and continental shelves of the northern hemisphere are among the most heavily degraded of all the environments on Earth - and the Carolinian Ecoregion is no exception. Recent reports by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Heinz Foundation, and U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy highlight the condition of our coastal systems and offer general recommendations for action. The aim of this assessment is to go one step further by providing more specific information and advice on potential priorities for conservation in this ecoregion.

A systematic regional planning approach was used for this assessment. The basic approach was to: identify objectives, i.e., to represent a full range of the region’s biodiversity for conservation; select targets to represent this biodiversity and be the focus of conservation efforts (36 targets were included); identify goals for the amount of the targets required to meet objectives; identify suitability factors likely to affect either the cost of conservation, the viability of targets in any area, or the suitability of a specific area for conservation; develop a spatial database from all the reasonably available regional-scale data on the targets and suitability factors, and select priority conservation areas to achieve the stated goals and objectives.

The site-selection tool MARXAN (www.ecology.uq.edu.au/marxan) was used in the decision-support framework to develop potential sets of conservation areas that met our objectives. The results from MARXAN (Figures 15, 16) were peer-reviewed and modified in workshops with scientists, managers, and conservation practitioners (see Appendix 2) to develop a portfolio of Conservation Areas that met the conservation planning objectives. Experts recommended few major changes to the MARXAN results and primarily identified changes to aggregate selected planning units into more biologically meaningful sites.

The end result was a conservation portfolio that included a total of 41 Conservation Areas (Figure 17) and encompassed 21 percent of the ecoregion. The planning team then worked with additional TNC staff to assess the targets, threats, and opportunities at the 41 Conservation Areas. From this process, 11 Action Areas (Figure 18) were recommended as sites where TNC should first explore opportunities for further contributions to marine conservation. The boundaries depicted in Figures 17 and 18 are rough approximations. It is assumed that more ecologically meaningful boundaries will be identified through site-specific planning and conservation efforts.

The identification of these areas makes no presumption about the best strategies for conservation at individual sites.  Before identifying conservation strategies, TNC will work with our partners to better understand the present and likely future threats to marine diversity, as well as the biological, socioeconomic, and political circumstances at each site.

Regional, ecosystem-based management is gaining support around the world as an approach for integrated planning and conservation of nearshore marine environments and resources. While there are many elements to effective ecosystem management, one of the essential requirements is the need to efficiently consider multiple species and their habitats as well as the socioeconomic factors in the region. The Carolinian assessment provides a foundation for partner coalitions or individual agencies to develop an ecosystem management framework. This integrated information provides a greater understanding of the biological diversity of the ecoregion and a clearer picture of the condition of its natural areas and the challenges to their continued survival.

We anticipate that partners will use the three main products provided with the assessment - the data, the decision-support tools, and the Conservation Areas - in different ways to meet their objectives. We look forward to collaborating with them in the pursuit of better conservation and management throughout the ecoregion. We also hope the information will spur additional research and monitoring efforts to strengthen this first generation assessment.

There are promising opportunities for conservation throughout the Carolinian Ecoregion and the Southeastern United States. There also is a compelling need for action. We hope the assessment will help shape a new vision for and commitment to the successful conservation and management of coastal and marine ecosystems throughout the region, as well as reinforce the many outstanding conservation activities already under way.