Table 2 Tools and techniques that can be applied to consider social-ecological knowledge in marine spatial planning

Cognitive Mapping to Understand Mental Models

Conceptual content cognitive mapping involves participants proposing concepts and then spatially or visually organizing knowledge to depict their understanding of interconnected systems^123,160.

Wade and Biedenweg¹⁶¹ used conceptual content cognitive mapping to investigate differences in mental models held by fishers and policymakers. Fishers’ mental models contained all the concepts in policymakers’ and numerous others, highlighting the importance of plural understandings for management.

Fuzzy cognitive mapping is useful for assessing stakeholders’/local peoples’ causal understandings of a system. Combined with graph theory tools and algorithms, human-ocean relationships can be understood more comprehensively¹²⁴.

St. Martin and Hall-Arber²⁴ used fuzzy cognitive mapping to understand the spatial patterning of fishing activity and communities in the Gulf of Maine, USA. This innovative and influential work revealed a ‘missing layer’ of people at sea and terrestrial-marine linkages, demonstrating key considerations for MSP regarding coastal communities, economies, and identities.

Arts-based Methods to Characterize Sense of Place

Arts-based methods use diverse media and creative activities to span different worldviews, allowing deeper engagement with individuals and communities to elicit and communicate their unique perspectives. These methods depend on knowledge production through music, photography, craft, poems, storytelling, theatre, and drawing to convey experiences, thoughts, ideas, values, beliefs, and knowledge¹⁶² surrounding a sense of place.

Ainsworth et al.⁶³ used community voice to articulate a coastal sense of place in Scotland and England. Broadening participation beyond exclusively rational discussion towards more expressive, inclusive understandings revealed profound insights into coastal values.

McNamara and McNamara¹⁶³ used participatory action research to build a calendar of Indigenous knowledge on Erub Island, Torres Strait, codifying marginalized knowledge in a process led by the local community. They turned the knowledge into a mural for a school, which helps preserve knowledge and imagine a more inclusive ocean management that celebrates long-held but threatened experiential understandings.

Oral History and Place Names to Recognize the Cultural Seascape

Storytelling is a method of sharing or recording indigenous knowledge and histories, such as creation stories and sites of cultural importance, and is often crucial to understanding place¹⁶⁴.

A study of marine tenure and fishing regulations in New Caledonia asked interviewees about historical and present fishing activities, marine territory rights, place names, and sociocultural practices and beliefs related to marine resources. Fishing rules were ultimately reformed based on local cultural practices and beliefs, complimenting Kanak cultural heritage¹⁶⁵.

Place names result from unique ontologies and can demonstrate how people interact with the environment¹⁶⁶. Interviews, historical records, and maps can give insight into place names’ origins in past events, local geography, and meanings related to ancestors or local history.

Indigenous place names were collected by the Coastal Sámi Resource Centre in Norway through oral histories and interviews in the native Sámi language. The resulting atlas highlighted Sámi settlement areas and place names in a single map, locating indigenous peoples and referenced Sámi mythology, cultural symbols, languages, and worldviews^46,167.

Stakeholder Engagement to Map Values at Sea

Stakeholder engagement can be implemented through multi-directional dialogue¹⁵⁰, such as small stakeholder meetings and focus groups. Participants should represent local populations’ values, needs, and desires¹⁶⁸. Participatory mapping can capture various peoples’ understandings of space and place¹⁶⁹.

Stakeholder engagement through participatory GIS-based mappingenabled an understanding diverse values and management preferences along the Kimberley Coast, Australia. Value mapping highlighted the potential for conflict over multiple desired ocean uses in a spatial format easily integrated into MSP¹²⁰.