Marine Atlas: Maximizing Benefits for Solomon Islands

BEYOND THE HOTSPOTS: BIOREGIONS Ideally ecosystem-based marine planning should be based on comprehensive data that represents all of Solomon Islands marine plants and animals. This data, how- ever is rarely available for any country. To overcome this limitation, surrogates can be used to classify the marine environment into spatial units, or bioregions, that host similar plants and animals.

The GOODS biogeographic classification from 2009 is an example of a global bioregionalization.

Such marine classification and the use of bioregions is not a new concept, as biore- gions have been produced before at various scales in other countries, regions and global- ly, including some that encompass Solomon Islands. The graphic provides one example of a global bioregionalization, the Global Open Oceans and Deep Seabed (GOODS) bioge- ographic classification, undertaken by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 2009. Classifications such as GOODS are very useful on a global scale. However, Solomon Islands’ large EEZ is divided into merely three bioregions, making the existing classifications of the marine environments, both coastal and offshore, too coarse to inform most nation- al marine planning processes in Solomon Islands. This calls for more detailed bioregions to inform marine planning. In 2016, in-country experts came together to describe preliminary marine bioregions for Solomon Islands, sup- ported by the MACBIO project. These include 33 deepwater and 18 reef bioregions (Wendt et al., 2018), as shown on the map. Using these bioregions as substitutes to describe the suite of marine biodiversity in Solomon Islands, an ecologically representa- tive system of managed and protected areas can be built. This is done by representing an example of every bioregion within an area, as well as examples of all known habitats and ecosystems (see also chapters “Nature’s hotspots” and “Special and Unique Marine Areas”). The bioregional approach assists planners with the fact that not all habitats and ecosystems are known and mapped.

data are not available for any country, including Solomon Islands. To overcome this limitation, surrogates must be used to classify the marine environment into spatial units, or bioregions, that can host simi- lar plants and animals. These surrogates include factors such as salinity (see also chapter “Go with the flow”), pH (see chapter “Turning sour”) or phosphate concentration (see chapter “The dose makes the poison”). Analysing and clustering such data results in spatial units, called marine “bioregions”. These bioregions present comprehensive descriptions of the marine biodiversity of Solomon Islands and can be used for con- servation, management and planning.

Solomon Islands’ waters are full of valuable marine biodiversity. To sustainably manage and protect Solomon Islands’ rich marine recourses, its government is committed to delivering a comprehensive, ecologically representative network of managed and protected marine areas (see also chapter “Solomon Islands’ commitment to marine conservation”). Ideally ecosystem-based marine planning should be based on com- prehensive biodiversity data that represent all of Solomon Islands’ marine plants and animals in its entire marine environment.

While a lot of data are accessible—as the maps in this atlas show—comprehensive

MAXIMIZING BENEFITS FOR SOLOMON ISLANDS

OCEAN VALUES

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