An integrative and participatory coastal habitat mapping framework for sustainable development actions in the United Arab Emirates

Highlights

• Integrative, participatory and step-wise framework for coastal habitat mapping.

• Integration of multiple data sources, including local ecological knowledge.

• Mapping Arabian Gulf coastal habitats in the United Arab Emirates.

• Efficient and cost-effective mapping approach for the Arabian Gulf coastal waters.

Abstract

Coastal habitat mapping is a potentially powerful enabling tool to inform the design of strategies and actions in coastal zone planning and management, biodiversity conservation and more recently for blue carbon accounting. Habitat mapping is typically carried out by experts in remote sensing and geographical information systems, and rarely integrates stakeholders’ local ecological knowledge. To address a key knowledge gap in a previously unmapped coastal region of the Arabian Gulf, we applied a mixed-methods habitat mapping framework that integrates conventional remote sensing methods with shared knowledge from participatory mapping with local stakeholders. Using methodological pluralism, an accurate and cost-effective coastal habitat map was produced that had local relevance, facilitated knowledge exchange, considered socio-ecological factors, and incorporated spatial details that would have been absent or under-represented with conventional remote sensing methods. We demonstrate the relevance of the coastal habitat map as an enabler of actions that address multiple local and global sustainable development and biodiversity conservation policy targets for the Arabian Gulf coast of the United Arab Emirates.

Introduction

Coastal habitats are among the most biologically diverse, productive and vulnerable regions on Earth providing critical ecosystem services that support human health and well-being (Barbier et al., 2011; Sousa et al., 2016). Mapping of coastal habitats is increasingly recognised as an essential process to support spatially explicit decision-making in marine ecosystem-based management and biodiversity conservation (Cogan et al., 2009; Buhl-Mortensen et al., 2015; Caldow et al., 2015; Malcolm et al., 2016). For example, coastal habitat maps can be used as a spatial proxy for mapping marine biodiversity patterns and species distributions (Ward et al., 1999; Pittman et al., 2007; Mellin et al., 2011), mapping ecosystem services (Klain & Chan, 2012; Damastuti & de Groot, 2019), and informing the design of conservation plans, management actions and monitoring programmes (Cogan et al., 2009; Kachelriess et al., 2014; Young & Carr, 2015). Coastal habitat maps enable planners to better consider vulnerable and priority habitats in urban planning, especially in regions with rapidly developing coastal cities (Burt et al., 2017). In response to accelerated climate change, coastal habitat maps are increasingly being created for national accounting of carbon sequestration and storage potential (blue carbon) for reporting climate change mitigations (i.e., Nationally Determined Contributions) (Young et al., 2021), and risk assessments for adaptation planning associated with sea-level rise (Carlson et al., 2021). As such, coastal habitats offer an important spatial nexus for addressing multiple interconnected sustainable development goals (e.g. food-climate-biodiversity) where mapping coastal habitat is pivotal to designing practical actions to meet policy targets.

Remote sensing and geographical information systems technologies have made considerable advances in coastal mapping at high resolution over broad geographical and temporal scales (Mumby et al., 1998; Lyons et al., 2020; Giri, 2021). However, insufficient consideration of local social context (e.g., local knowledge, management priorities) (Teixeira et al., 2013; Davies et al., 2020) overlooks opportunities to optimise the local relevance of coastal habitat maps. Furthermore, local knowledge has potential to address some of the constraints in mapping caused by physically dynamic environmental conditions (e.g., tides, wave climate, depth, water clarity, access) (Eugenio et al., 2017; Kutser et al., 2020). Integrative approaches which utilise a mixture of data sources including local ecological knowledge in the mapping process (Baldwin & Oxenford, 2014; Brown et al., 2018; Henriques et al., 2015), provide a methodological solution to overcome some of the frequently encountered limitations in conventional remote sensing for coastal habitat mapping.

In data-poor situations, especially where community connections to coastal ecosystems remain culturally and ecologically integrated, local ecological knowledge (LEK), including traditional or Indigenous ecological knowledge (Davis & Ruddle, 2010), can inform and improve aspects of coastal habitat mapping (Teixeira et al., 2014; Baldwin & Oxenford, 2014; Kaiser et al., 2019). Historically, LEK has rarely been harnessed for coastal habitat mapping, but it is increasingly recognised that LEK has great potential to guide targeted investigations and to address broad scale geographic knowledge gaps (Reed et al., 2009; Teixeira et al., 2013; Loerzel et al., 2017). For instance, LEK can provide a diverse range of reference observations across longer time periods than remotely sensed images (Jones et al., 2016). LEK has been successfully used to help map benthic habitats (Lauer & Aswani, 2008; Teixeira et al., 2013; Baldwin & Oxenford, 2014; Jones et al., 2016), identify key coral reef features and assess habitat condition, threats and human uses (Loerzel et al., 2017; Moore et al., 2017), understand the spatial distribution of fishing effort (Léopold et al., 2014; St. Martin & Olson, 2017), locate fish spawning aggregations (Heyman et al., 2019), document patterns of ecological connectivity (Berkström et al., 2019), and the spatial distribution of harvested marine species (Monkman et al., 2018; Sánchez-Carnero et al., 2016). Furthermore, a participatory and inclusive approach to mapping can be more culturally sensitive and, depending on specific objectives, may benefit from humanising the mapping process resulting in enhanced relevance to local communities, deeper understanding, and trust, of the mapping process and products, and facilitation of future adaptive and collaborative co-management (Baldwin & Oxenford, 2014). Although not always directly relevant to the technical process of habitat mapping, it is judicious to recognise within the mapping process that resource management is a politically and culturally driven process and often encompasses spatially complex patterns of contested space (Bennett, 2018; Levine et al., 2015; Moore et al., 2017; Sullivan et al., 2015).

Here we present an integrative and participatory mapping framework for pragmatic production of a cost-effective and reliable coastal habitat map for the United Arab Emirates where the end-users were an integral part of the mapping process. We describe each sequential stage in our step-wise framework to habitat mapping culminating in a series of pertinent questions, which if addressed, will help increase the efficiency of the habitat mapping process. The framework is demonstrated with a case study in the Arabian Gulf to overcome several major barriers to the production and application of relatively high-resolution (100 m²) habitat maps for the Arabian Gulf coast of the United Arab Emirates. Although focused on the UAE, the mapping framework also has great potential for application in the broader Arabian Gulf region where similar challenges are being addressed.