The ‘Monitoring and Evaluation of Spatially Managed Area’ (MESMA) generic planning framework includes a series of steps for each spatially managed area including data collection (ecosystem components, human activities, governance); identification of indicators; risk analysis and state assessment; and adaptive management evaluation. Supporting the implementation of MESMA, the workflow was developed: (i) to support implementation of MESMA in the Atlantic Ocean, which allows compilation of the relevant data layers, easily compiling data from different sources with different resolutions and spatial scales; (ii) enable practitioners with little programming knowledge to perform cumulative effects assessments using pre-packaged R scripts; (iii) to produce raster outputs that can be inputted into QGIS for data visualisation and mapping; and into MarXAN or similar, for testing management scenarios including systematic conservation planning.

Developed using open source R with data visualisation performed using the open source QGIS, the workflow enables transparent presentation of information to stakeholders (e.g. mapped cumulative impact scores).