Climate-Resilient Zoning Design for Marine Protected Areas in Pulo Aceh Using CIVAT Vulnerability Assessment and MARXAN Spatial Optimization

Abstract

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) designed primarily to address anthropogenic pressures may prove ineffective under accelerating climate change, particularly in small island ecosystems with high inherent vulnerability. The existing zoning of the Aceh Besar Regional Marine Conservation Area (KKPD), covering 29,615.63 ha, including Pulo Aceh subdistrict, has not explicitly integrated climate resilience criteria into its spatial planning. This study proposes an integrated CIVAT-MARXAN framework to develop climate-resilient MPA zoning in Pulo Aceh, Aceh Besar. The Coastal Integrated Vulnerability Assessment Tool (CIVAT) will be applied to assess coastal ecosystem vulnerability across three components: exposure (sea level rise, extreme waves, tidal range), sensitivity (coastal geomorphology, reef platform width, vegetation cover), and adaptive capacity (institutional, socioeconomic, and ecological factors). The resulting spatial vulnerability index will serve as the cost input for MARXAN (Marine Reserve Design using Spatially Explicit Annealing), which optimizes conservation zone configurations to achieve ecological targets at minimum cost while maintaining spatial compactness. Data collection will combine field surveys, satellite imagery, and secondary oceanographic datasets from BMKG and NASA. Expected outputs include a coastal vulnerability map, identification of dominant vulnerability drivers, an optimized climate-resilient zoning design for KKPD Aceh Besar, and a replicable CIVAT-MARXAN methodological framework applicable to Indonesia. This research contributes to climate-adaptive marine conservation planning and supports Indonesia's commitment to conserving 30% of its marine area by 2030.