Ali Haghi Vayghan - Department of Fisheries, Faculty of Natural Resource, Gorgan University of Agricultural science and Natural Resource
Hadi Poorbagher - Department of Fisheries, Faculty of Natural Resource, University of Tehran, Karaj PO Box ۴۳۱۴, Iran
Mahdi Alipour - Department of Environmental planning, education and management, Faculty of Environment, University of Tehran
Saeed Karimi - Department of Environmental planning, education and management, Faculty of Environment, University of Tehran

There is a global increasing in ecosystem management for selected species, biodiversity and ecosystem function. The declining health of marine ecosystems around the world is evidence that current piecemeal governance is inadequate to successfully support healthy coastal and ocean ecosystems and sustain human uses of the ocean. Nowadays, there is a growing need to applying ecological principles in ecosystem planning. It has totally accepted that habitat assessment should play a decisive role in environmental planning process. Herein, one proposed solution to this problem is marine spatial planning (MSP) based in ecosystem based management (EBM). This approach is a process that informs the spatial distribution of activities in the ocean so that existing and emerging uses can be maintained, use conflicts reduced, and ecosystem health and services protected and sustained for future generations. Thereby, the ecosystem-based exploitation, assessment and management based on MSP are sensible in our marine resources. Surely, this review paper is advising for those researchers that tend to this kind of approach to improve and develop such studies in our country

Ecosystem based management, marine spatial planning, ecosystem modeling, marine resource modeling, marine environment