Technical report

File type: PDF

Hayes KR, Walsh P, Barrett N, Cook CN, Dunstan P, Flukes E, Francis S, Grammer G, Hosack GR, Howe S, Ierodiaconou D, Langlois T, Lawrey E, Logan D, Lucieer V, Monk J, Williams J, and Woolley SNC (2024). Improving knowledge transfer to support Australian Marine Park decision making and management effectiveness evaluation. Report to the National Environmental Science Program. CSIRO, Hobart, Australia.

December 2024

Overview

Parks Australia requires data products that are “fit for purpose” in order to effectively manage Australia’s marine parks. This project helped to develop and implement a data product quality assurance framework by: (i) identifying the use cases and data products Parks Australia needs to answer six key management questions; (ii) developing a suite of quality assessment criteria; (iii) assessing existing data products and their associated repositories against these criteria; and (iv) documenting recommendations that will help ensure data products become fit for their intended purpose. The report identifies 20 data products (and their associated repositories) used by Parks Australia to answer 4 key questions, and makes over 100 recommendations to help ensure these products becomes fit for purpose.

The project also provided demonstrations to Parks Australia of an expert facilitated approach to assessing the condition of natural values in a marine park. This demonstration precipitated a series of internal discussions within Parks Australia from which it became clear that, despite the considerable progress that has been made to date, Parks Australia needs to resolve a number of internal policy questions before it can implement a monitoring and management effectiveness system. To assist in these discussion this report provides a detailed outline of the steps involved in a condition assessment process, together with a summary of the important methodological and policy choices that each step entails, together with a set potential indicators for benthic natural values, that were identified during the course of the project.

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