Considerations for Using Alternative Technologies in Nutrient Management on Cape Cod: Beyond Cost and Performance.

Mitigating non-point source nitrogen in coastal estuaries is economically, environmentally, logistically, and socially challenging. On Cape Cod, Massachusetts, nitrogen management includes both traditional, centralized wastewater treatment and sewering as well as a number of alternative technologies. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 37 participants from governmental and non-governmental organizations as well as related industries to identify the barriers and opportunities for the use of alternative technologies to mitigate nitrogen pollution. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, and then analyzed using content analysis and rhetorical analysis. Cost and technical capacity to reduce nitrogen were the most discussed considerations. Beyond those, there were a slew of additional considerations that also impacted whether a technology would be installed, permitted, and socially accepted. These included: maintenance and monitoring logistics, comparisons to sewering, co-benefits, risk/uncertainty, community culture, extent of public engagement, permitting/regulatory challenges, and siting considerations. The insights about these additional considerations are valuable for transferring to other coastal areas managing nutrient impairments that may have not yet factored in these considerations when making decisions about how to meet water quality goals.

Using data derived from cellular phone locations to estimate visitation to natural areas: An application to water recreation in New England, USA.

We introduce and validate the use of commercially available human mobility datasets based on cell phone locations to estimate visitation to natural areas. By combining this data with on-the-ground observations of visitation to water recreation areas in New England, we fit a model to estimate daily visitation for four months to more than 500 sites. The results show the potential for this new big data source of human mobility to overcome limitations in traditional methods of estimating visitation and to provide consistent information at policy-relevant scales. However, the data providers' opaque and rapidly developing methods for processing locational information required a calibration and validation against data collected by traditional means to confidently reproduce the desired estimates of visitation. We found that with this calibration, the high-resolution information in both space and time provided by cell phone location-derived data creates opportunities for developing next-generation models of human interactions with the natural environment.

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.