Marxan

Marxan is a widely used decision support tool for spatial conservation prioritization in terrestrial as well as maritime space. This free and open source software is used in 184 countries to build marine and terrestrial conservation systems and acts as the global leader in conservation land and sea use planning. Marxan is primarily designed to solve spatial prioritization problem where the goal is to achieve minimum representation of biodiversity features that will meet user-defined targets for the smallest possible cost.

Data and Resources

Additional Info

Field	Value
Tool category	Site identification
MSP stages	4 Develop alternative management actions
MSP users	Planners Scientists NGOs
Type of software	Desktop
Compatible OS	Windows Mac Linux
Input data	Quantitative Spatially explicit
Output data	Layer
Organization	University of Queensland
Code accessibility	open source: the source code is openly available in github
Software license	GNU Affero General Public License
Documentation	Full user documentation Draft developer documentation Tutorials Videos & presentations
Tool community facilities	Mailing list
Additional informations	Scientific publications: Ball, I.R., HP Possingham, and M Watts. 2009. Marxan and relatives. Software for spatial conservation prioritisation. Chapter 14: Pages 185-195 in Spatial Conservation prioritisation: Quantitative methods and computational tools. Eds Moilanen, A., K.A. Wilson, and H.P. Possingham. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK. Decision Point – Special Marxan Issue- October 2010. Ball, I.R., and H.P. Possingham, 2000. MARXAN (V1.8.2): Marine Reserve Design Using Spatially Explicit Annealing, a Manual. Game, E.T., and H.S. Grantham, 2008. Marxan User Manual: For Marxan version 1.8.10. University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Queensland, Australian, and Pacific Marine Analysis and Research Association, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Marxan release notes for Marxan 2.43 2nd May 2011.
Relevance for case studies
Metadata completeness	Complete