Community-based marine protected areas (MPAs) have long been recognized as management tools for marine conservation internationally, but are less common in the United States where most MPAs are established through national or state-level legislation.  However, federal and state MPAs are increasingly incorporating more community-based mechanisms to inform their planning and management processes and to increase local and regional support for protected areas.  Such mechanisms include advisory committees, participatory GIS, web-based decision support tools, and bottom up planning.  There is a need to share successful approaches across federal, state, territorial and tribal MPA programs to increase successful community engagement in MPA planning and management.  

This project would identify and develop case studies and lessons learned from tools and processes being used to engage communities in the U.S. in MPA planning and management, in part by building on the work on Marine Ecosystem-Based Management in Practice (conducted by researchers at SNRE, Brown University and Duke University).  Case studies will be identified in collaboration with staff at the NOAA National Marine Protected Areas Center, and will highlight tools that communities can use to promote and enhance place-based conservation.   The project is envisioned as including both a virtual symposium (webinar) on Community Based Tools for U.S. MPA Planning and Management (which will provide an opportunity for students to organize MPA managers and other experts to present on their tools and experiences, providing direct input to the written case studies), as well as a final report, which will include the case studies and lessons learned.  

These products will directly contribute to a draft milestone in the U.S. National Ocean Policy Implementation Plan, which calls for NOAA to "develop best practices for conducting a marine gap analysis emphasizing new techniques to gather information and build support for conservation outcomes through community and stakeholder engagement."   The products will also be shared with federal, state and tribal ocean management programs and NGOs in the U.S., and will help provide direction for future capacity building efforts.