Geographies of Dirty Water: Landscape-Scale Inequities in Coastal Access in Rhode Island.

Across the United States, development, gentrification, and water quality degradation have altered our access to the coasts, redistributing the benefits from those spaces. Building on prior coastal and green space access research, we examined different populations' relative travel distances to all public coastal access and to public marine swimming beaches across the state of Rhode Island, by race, ethnicity, and socioeconomics. Next, we assessed relative travel distances to high quality public coastal amenities, i.e., sites with no history of water quality impairment. We used three state-level policy attributes to identify sites with the best water quality: Clean Water Act Section 303(d) impaired waters, shellfishing restrictions, and bacterial beach closure histories. Our analysis revealed statewide disparities in access to Rhode Island's public coastal amenities. With robust socioeconomic and geographic controls, race and ethnicity remained strongly correlated to travel distance. Higher proportions of Black and Latinx populations in census block groups were associated with longer travel distances to public access, in particular to public coastal sites with better water quality and to public swimming beaches. This translates to added costs on each trip for areas with higher Black and Latinx populations.

Quantifying Recreational Use of an Estuary: A Case Study of Three Bays, Cape Cod, USA.

Estimates of the types and number of recreational users visiting an estuary are critical data for quantifying the value of recreation and how that value might change with variations in water quality or other management decisions. However, estimates of recreational use are minimal and conventional intercept surveys methods are often infeasible for widespread application to estuaries. Therefore, a practical observational sampling approach was developed to quantify the recreational use of an estuary without the use of surveys. Designed to be simple and fast to allow for replication, the methods involved the use of periodic instantaneous car counts multiplied by extrapolation factors derived from all-day counts. This simple sampling approach can be used to estimate visitation to diverse types of access points on an estuary in a single day as well as across multiple days. Evaluation of this method showed that when periodic counts were taken within a preferred time window (from 11am-4:30pm), the estimates were within 44 percent of actual daily visitation. These methods were applied to the Three Bays estuary system on Cape Cod, USA. The estimated combined use across all its public access sites is similar to the use at a mid-sized coastal beach, demonstrating the value of estuarine systems. Further, this study is the first to quantify the variety and magnitude of recreational uses at several different types of access points throughout the estuary using observational methods. This work can be transferred to the many small coastal access points used for recreation across New England and beyond.

Lessons from Philippines MPA Management: Social Ecological Interactions, Participation, and MPA Performance.

International interest in increasing marine protected area (MPA) coverage reflects broad recognition of the MPA as a key tool for marine ecosystems and fisheries management. Nevertheless, effective management remains a significant challenge. The present study contributes to enriching an understanding of best practices for MPA management through analysis of archived community survey data collected in the Philippines by the Learning Project (LP), a collaboration with United States Coral Triangle Initiative (USCTI), United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and partners. We evaluate stakeholder participation and social ecological interactions among resource users in MPA programs in the Palawan, Occidental Mindoro, and Batangas provinces in the Philippines. Analysis indicates that a complex suite of social ecological factors, including demographics, conservation beliefs, and scientifically correct knowledge influence participation, which in turn is related to perceived MPA performance. Findings indicate positive feedbacks within the system that have potential to strengthen perceptions of MPA success. The results of this evaluation provide empirical reinforcement to current inquiries concerning the role of participation in influencing MPA performance.