The authors evaluated the effects of planning-unit size on emergent patterns of species-richness hotspots across the Gulf of Maine-Georges Bank Large Marine Ecosystem. The authors used data on the distribution of fishes as information for this taxon is the most geographically and temporally comprehensive due to their economic value and requirements for active and ongoing management. They also investigated both how spatial scale affects geographic patterns of species richness as well as the effect of sample size per planning unit on such patterns. An effort-standardization approach based on a bootstrap procedure was used to address variation in sample effort across the geographic region. In order to understand the equivalence of hotspots in terms of conservation value, the authors also investigated patterns of species similarity among hotspots across the gradient of planning-unit size.

Recent studies on the continental shelf of the northeastern United States suggest that substrate and water mass characteristics are highly correlated with the composition of benthic communities and may therefore, serve as proxies for the distribution of biological biodiversity. A detailed geo-referenced interpretative map of major sediment types within Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary (SBNMS) has recently been developed, and computer-aided decision support tools have reached new levels of sophistication. We demonstrate the use of simulated annealing, a type of mathematical optimization, to identify suites of potential conservation sites within SBNMS that equally represent 1) all major sediment types and 2) derived habitat types based on both sediment and depth in the smallest amount of space.