Guidance and Tutorials
The Conservancy and others have developed further guidance and hands-on tutorials for a more in depth exploration of the use of Marxan and how changing input parameters can affect outputs and results in conservation planning.

Marxan Example Tutorial

Marxan Guidance
There are a variety of guidance documents available that give detailed explanations of specific data preparation techniques and creating input files. These documents are available through the Resources page and are briefly explained here.
  • Marxan Basic Guidance (download .doc, 1MB) and Expert Guidance (download .doc, 1MB) documents (Huggins 2005) provide information on Marxan project considerations.

  • The Marxan Module (download .zip, 15.7MB) from the Protected Area Gap Decision Support System Tutorial (Schill and Raber 2006) provides similar guidance on the use of Marxan with examples from the Caribbean.

  • The Marxan Guidance (download, .ppt, 43MB) powerpoint presentation is a visual examination of some of the input and outputs and how Marxan has been used in a case study example in the Caribbean.

  • There are also examples of ecoregional assessments that have utilized Marxan and have dedicated sections explaining its use in regional conservation applications. These include Willamette Valley - Puget Trough - Georgia Basin,(download .pdf, 23MB) Carolinian (download .pdf, 21MB), and Pacific Northwest Coast (download .pdf, 11MB) ecoregions.

Marxan Tutorials
There are several ways to learn hands-on about how to use the program. The Conservancy has created two tutorials depending on the software available to users.
  • Protected Area Gap DSS.zip is a tutorial that provides guidance on using Marxan with the most up to date ArcGIS software from ESRI's Geographic Information System (GIS) software (Schill and Raber 2006). This tutorial also includes an exercise using the standalone Marxan program.

  • The MARXAN Manual (download .pdf, 268k) from the University of Queensland is a core resource that explains the program.

  • TNC_marxan_tutorial_arcview3.zip (download, .zip) is a tutorial that recognizes that many users still rely on ArcView (3x) software for their GIS. Follow the instructions below for opening the project. Then open the Marxan Guidance powerpoint presentation and try it out.

  • CLUZ is an ArcView extension and P.A.N.D.A is a standalone program that links to ArcGIS. Both of these programs conduct data preparations and running of Marxan.