MARXAN helps to find efficient solutions for reserve system design. It finds reasonably efficient solutions to the problem of selecting a system of spatially cohesive sites that meet a suite of biodiversity targets. Although it is described as a system for design of marine reserves in particular, it is equally well suited for terrestrial applications. The model calculates the portfolio cost for each potential solution and tries to minimize this cost while generating a near-optimal solution. Hundreds of different scenarios can be run and compared to look at different outcomes and patterns in the outcomes to determine which landscape elements are most critical to preserve. Given reasonably uniform data on species, habitats and/or other relevant biodiversity features and surrogates for a number of planning units (as many as 20,000), MARXAN minimizes the cost (a weighted sum of area and boundary length, Possingham, Ball and Andelman, 2001), while attempting to meet user-defined biodiversity targets. The new version of Marxan has support for the Zonae Cogito decision support system and doubles the processing speed.
Hugh Possingham et al. 2000. Mathematical methods for identifying representative reserve networks. [http://www.ecology.uq.edu.au/links/CH17Reprint.pdf]
http://www.uq.edu.au/marxan/ (No Longer Available)
All (User Specified Application Domain)
Biodiversity Conservation
Estuarine, Coastal And Marine Management
Alternative Evaluation
Reserve System
Site Search Or Selection
All (User Specified Domain Knowledge Modeling Area)
Estuarine And Marine Ecosystem Modeling
Landscape Analysis And Modeling
Management Process Modeling
Socioeconomic System Modeling
Alternative Generation
Rank Alternatives
Visualization
Optimization Methods
Simulated Annealing
Trade-Off Analysis
Visualization
Biophysical Process
Economic Process
Management Process
Social Process
User Defined Process
Spatial Dataset
Table
ESRI Shapefile
Text File (.TXT)
Spatial Dataset
Table
ESRI Shapefile
Text File (.TXT)
All (User Defined Analysis Extent)
Regional Extent
Subregional Extent
Subregion
Forest Fragmentation
Forest Management Classes
Species Diversity
true
Windows 2000
Windows 95/98
Windows NT
Windows XP
Protected Area Tools (PAT)
Zonae Cogito
Arcgis
Arcview
Zonae Cogito
IDRISI
Optimization: The engine, MARXAN.exe, primarily uses simulated annealing to find near-optimal solutions, but it also includes a variety of less sophisticated, but often faster, heuristic algorithms, such as "summed irreplaceability" (Leslie et al. in press; McDonnell et al. 2002).Other: A separate graphic user interface is provided for setting up input data and run options for the engine. MARXAN does not provide graphic display of design solutions, but its output data are easily imported into GIS applications such as ArcView 3.2 of ArcGIS 8.x
Some Scientific Background
Some Computer/GIS Programming Skills
true
false
Free
Regularly Distributed
The Ecology Centre, The University Of Queensland
National Commission On Science For Sustainable Forestry
Hugh Possingham
h.possingham@uq.edu.au
Sean Gordon
Software Tools And Models - All
Spatial Decision Support Systems
Martin Wong
3/17/2010
Alternative Ranking, Decision Making
Decision Alternatives Generation, Scenario Simulation
Visualization
Spatial Decision Support Systems
Decision Model
Evaluative Models