Contribution of the marine protected areas of the national natural park system to the Ecosystems representativeness of Colombia

Abstract

An analysis of representativeness of marine and coastal ecosystems was carried out in the 18 Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) administered by the System of National Natural Parks of Colombia (SPNN) and their changes in 2020 compared to 2010. The Caribbean increased the representativeness of mangroves, seagrasses, sedimentary bottoms, and saline beaches. In the Pacific, estuaries representativeness, sedimentary bottoms, mangroves, intertidal mudflats, sandy beaches, and seamounts increased. Deep-sea corals were included as a new ecosystem for the SPNN. From the representativeness ranges determined for this analysis, it was found that the only ecosystem with no representativeness (0 %) (Deep-sea corals) became overrepresented (≥ 60 %). The number of low representative ecosystems decreased from 8 to 7 (< 10 %), while the medium representative ecosystems increased from 9 to 10 (10-29 %). In the last decade, ecosystems of ecological importance such as estuaries (0.55 %) in the Caribbean and mixed guandal forests (0.22 %) for the Pacific did not change their representativeness. There is evidence of the need to increase research and knowledge of deep benthic habitats to include them within the System and take advantage of the international dialogue scenario to contribute to ambitious conservation goals within the post-2020 framework of the Convention on Biological Diversity.