Fantastic wetlands and why to monitor them: Demonstrating the social and financial benefit potential of methane abatement through salt marsh restoration.

Salt marsh restoration has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions thereby providing an opportunity for blue carbon crediting, but implementation has been limited to date because of insufficient data and validation. In this paper, we demonstrate the potential scale of methane emissions that could be avoided if salinity-reducing impairments are mitigated by applying findings from six salt marsh restoration sites in Massachusetts combined with a previously demonstrated application of the salt marsh salinity-methane relationship. We used calculations of these avoided emissions to estimate the social benefit of salt marsh restoration by calculating avoided costs. Of the six sites selected, restorations at two sites were successful in improving salinity which we used as a methane proxy. Our approach and findings demonstrate the potential benefits in developing consistent accounting methodologies to better track, prioritize, and implement wetlands restoration strategies to mitigate methane emissions and contribute toward state-level emissions reduction targets across some of the 475 Massachusetts salt marches with an existing tidal restriction. We found the potential for $12 -$26M in added social benefit from 176 tons of avoided methane across 932 hectares of degraded salt marsh in Massachusetts. A significant limitation in estimating benefits, however, is the lack of coordinated, widespread monitoring strategies to infer methane and other GhGs at scale. While not insurmountable, these challenges will need to be addressed for GhG emissions reduction and/or sequestration through salt marsh restoration to be accepted as an effective strategy. We conclude that while carbon crediting may offer benefits to marsh restoration and state greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets, there remain significant limitations because of a lack of project monitoring and data validation. In the worst case, this could result in the offsetting of actual greenhouse gas emissions with credits that are supported by indirect and less-than-rigorous monitoring data.

Factors in homeowners' willingness to adopt nitrogen-reducing innovative/alternative septic systems.

When environmental mitigation requires individual adoption, engagement approaches centered on cost effectiveness and technological efficiency alone are often insufficient. Through focus groups with adopters and prospective adopters, this research identifies factors influencing homeowners' willingness to adopt Innovative/Alternative (I/A) septic systems for nitrogen reduction. We apply concepts from technology adoption and behavior change models as a framework for illustrating the homeowner decision-making process around I/A adoption. The perceived needs to replace an old/failing septic system, comply with local regulations, and protect local water quality synergistically catalyzed adoption. Adoption was further influenced by the larger context within which it is taking place, perceived characteristics of I/A systems and the installation process, system aesthetics concerns, and homeowners' attitudes and beliefs. Considering how these factors affect adoption could enable resource managers to design more targeted interventions to encourage adoption through behavior change strategies such as social marketing, and to improve how these systems are communicated. If I/A systems are to be used as a tool to achieve water quality goals, the considerations influencing homeowners' willingness to install these systems will be critical to incentivizing voluntary adoption. Many of these factors are relevant to the adoption of other individual-level environmental management strategies, which are being increasingly deployed in response to complex, nonpoint source pollution issues.

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.

Coastal Recreation in Southern New England: Results from a Regional Survey.

This paper presents a summary of coastal recreation of New England residents from a survey conducted in the summer of 2018. The management of New England's coasts benefits from understanding the value of coastal recreation and the factors influencing recreational behavior. To address this need, the survey collected the geographic location and trip details for both day and overnight visits to any type of location on the New England coast for a range of water recreation activities, providing a comprehensive view of coastal recreation in the region. This paper summarizes participation in various types of water recreation activities, including beachgoing, swimming, fishing, wildlife viewing, boating, and other coastal recreation activities. We quantify demand for coastal recreation using participation and effort models that disaggregate the dimensions of recreational behavior over space and census demographics. This provides insights on the scale and location of beneficiaries of this important human use of the natural environment. We found that 71% of people in the surveyed region participate in coastal recreation and engage in a wide range of coastal recreation activities at varied locations from open-ocean-facing coastal beaches to sheltered, estuarine ways to water. On average, people in the region take 37 trips to recreate on the coast of New England in a year, spending 167 hours per year visiting recreation sites and 66 hours traveling. This adds up to nearly 170.5 million trips from our sample region, 772.4 million hours of recreation time, and 304.6 million hours of travel time. Distance to the coast, demographics, and recreational activities affect how often people go and how much time they spend on coastal recreation.

Evaluating water quality impacts on visitation to coastal recreation areas using data derived from cell phone locations.

Linking human behavior to environmental quality is critical for effective natural resource management. While it is commonly assumed that environmental conditions partially explain variation in visitation to coastal recreation areas across space and time, scarce and inconsistent visitation observations challenge our ability to reveal these connections. With the ubiquity of mobile phone usage, novel sources of digitally derived data are increasingly available at a massive scale. Applications of mobile phone locational data have been effective in research on urban-centric human mobility and transportation, but little work has been conducted on understanding behavioral patterns surrounding dynamic natural resources. We present an application of cell phone locational data to estimate the effects of beach closures, based on measured bacteria threshold exceedances, on visitation to coastal access points. Our results indicate that beach closures on Cape Cod, MA, USA have a significant negative effect on visitation at those beaches with closures, while closures at a sample of coastal access points elsewhere in New England have no detected impact on visitation. Our findings represent geographic mobility patterns for over 7 million unique coastal visits and suggest that closures resulted in approximately 1,800 (0.026%) displaced visits for Cape Cod during the summer season of 2017. We demonstrate the potential for human-mobility data derived from mobile phones to reveal the scale of use and behavior in response to changes in dynamic natural resources. Potential future applications of passively collected geocoded data to human-environmental systems are vast.

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.

When, where, and how to intervene? Trade-offs between time and costs in coastal nutrient management.

Policies and regulations designed to address nutrient pollution in coastal waters are often complicated by delays in environmental and social systems. Social and political inertia may delay implementation of cleanup projects, and even after the best nutrient pollution management practices are developed and implemented, long groundwater travel times may delay the impact of inland or upstream interventions. These delays and the varying costs of nutrient removal alternatives used to meet water quality goals combine to create a complex dynamic decision problem with trade-offs about when, where, and how to intervene. We use multi-objective optimization to quantify the trade-offs between costs and minimizing the time to meet in-bay nutrient reduction goals represented as a Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL). We calculate the impact of using in-bay (in-situ) nutrient removal through shellfish aquaculture relative to waiting for traditional source control to be implemented. We apply these methods to the Three Bays Watershed in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. In gross benefit terms, not accounting for any social costs, this equates to an average value of 37¢ (2035 TMDL target date) and 11¢ (2060 TMDL target date) per animal harvested over the plan implementation period. Our results encourage the consideration of alternative and in-situ approaches to tackle coastal pollution while traditional source control is implemented and its effects realized over time.

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.

Designing Solutions for Clean Water on Cape Cod: Engaging Communities to Improve Decision Making.

Many of the remaining mechanisms for reducing land-based nitrogen release in coastal communities depend on behavior change, social acceptance, and public support of localized mitigation programs. These needs necessitate appropriate and effective stakeholder engagement. Cape Cod, Massachusetts, USA, is one example of an area undergoing significant local, regional, state and federal decision-making processes to address nitrogen impacts on coastal waterbodies through an update to its Area Wide Water Quality Management Plan (208 Plan). The 208 Plan Update seeks to support mitigation of nitrogen pollution and restore estuarine health through active community engagement with elected officials, town staff, citizens, and other stakeholders across its 53 embayment watersheds, 35 of which are deemed impaired. With an economy deeply tied to the environment, the region is in the difficult position of needing to make significant infrastructure investments to maintain its reputation for high quality coastal waters. It is the first region in the United States to undergo an extensive revisit of its Area Wide Water Quality Management Plan developed pursuant to Section 208of the federal Clean Water Act for the purpose of addressing nitrogen. The community engagement process for the 208 Plan Update set forth to 1) understand the range of perspectives regarding the extent of the nitrogen impacts as well as the possible solutions, 2) ensure two-way communication of available information, and 3) build trust through a transparent process. The process specifically applied a number of different mechanisms for community engagement which enabled progress in addressing nitrogen management needs. The process helped to determine and address barriers to successful implementation of nitrogen mitigation plans and resulted in a framework for watershed-based planning that relies on regional coordination and supports local selection of mitigation strategies. As a result, communities in the region are developing innovative cross-municipal partnerships and committing to fund infrastructure necessary to decrease nitrogen loading to coastal embayments.

Valuing Coastal Beaches and Closures Using Benefit Transfer: An Application to Barnstable, Massachusetts.

Each year, millions of Americans visit beaches for recreation, resulting in significant social welfare benefits and economic activity. Considering the high use of coastal beaches for recreation, closures due to bacterial contamination have the potential to greatly impact coastal visitors and communities. We used readily-available information to develop two transferable models that, together, provide estimates for the value of a beach day as well as the lost value due to a beach closure. We modeled visitation for beaches in Barnstable, Massachusetts on Cape Cod through panel regressions to predict visitation by type of day, for the season, and for lost visits when a closure was posted. We used a meta-analysis of existing studies conducted throughout the United States to estimate a consumer surplus value of a beach visit of around $22 for our study area, accounting for water quality at beaches by using past closure history. We applied this value through a benefit transfer to estimate the value of a beach day, and combined it with lost town revenue from parking to estimate losses in the event of a closure. The results indicate a high value for beaches as a public resource and show significant losses to the town when beaches are closed due to an exceedance in bacterial concentrations.

A resilience framework for chronic exposures: water quality and ecosystem services in coastal social-ecological systems.

Water quality degradation is a chronic problem which influences the resilience of a social-ecological system differently than acute disturbances, such as disease or storms. Recognizing this, we developed a tailored resilience framework that applies ecosystem service concepts to coastal social-ecological systems affected by degraded water quality. We present the framework as a mechanism for coordinating interdisciplinary research to inform long-term community planning decisions pertaining to chronic challenges in coastal systems. The resulting framework connects the ecological system to the social system via ecological production functions and ecosystem services. The social system then feeds back to the ecological system via policies and interventions to address declining water quality. We apply our resilience framework to the coastal waters and communities of Cape Cod (Barnstable County, Massachusetts, USA) which are affected by nitrogen over-enrichment. This approach allowed us to design research to improve the understanding of the effectiveness and acceptance of water quality improvement efforts and their effect on the delivery of ecosystem services. This framework is intended to be transferable to other geographical settings and more generally applied to systems exposed to chronic disturbances in order to coordinate interdisciplinary research planning and inform coastal management.

USING DIVERSE EXPERTISE TO ADVANCE CLIMATE CHANGE FISHERIES SCIENCE.

As climate change continues to impact New England's coastal ecosystems and their related fisheries, the need for measuring, projecting, interpreting, and applying those impacts for adaptive management is expanding. In New England, different types of formal and informal research efforts that involve collaboration between the fishing community and traditional university and government researchers continue to develop to address some of this need. To better understand the opportunities and challenges that these collaborative research efforts face, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 18 members of the fishing and research communities who are engaged in advancing New England climate change and fisheries science. Participants showed clear concern for the impacts of climate change on New England fisheries and about the insufficient availability of the necessary science to manage for those impacts. They also noted a number of challenges in collaborative research, including poor communication and a lack of trust among fishers, researchers, and decision makers, as well as a lack of perceived credibility for research coming out of the fishing community. We identify a number of opportunities for improving collaboration and communication among these groups, which could build upon the identified value of existing collaborations.

Different shades of green: a case study of support for wind farms in the rural midwest.

Benton County, in north-central Indiana, USA has successfully sited more than 500 turbines. To understand Benton County's acceptance of wind farms, a holistic case study was conducted that included a document review, a survey of local residents and interviews with key stakeholders. Survey questionnaires were sent to 750 residents asking questions about attitudes toward the wind farms, perceived benefits and impacts from the wind farms, environmental attitudes, and demographic information. Key stakeholders were also interviewed for a deeper understanding of the historical timeline and community acceptance of the wind farm development. While there is limited opposition to the turbines, on the whole the community presents a front of acceptance. Financial, rather than environmental, benefits are the main reason for the acceptance. Although significant in other case studies, transparency and participation do not play a large role in Benton County's acceptance. Most residents are not concerned with either visual impacts or noise from the wind turbines. More concrete benefits to the community, such as reduced energy bills for county residents, could help to extend acceptance even further within the community. Although there are concerns about the acceptance of wind farms and the impacts of those farms on local residents in both peer-reviewed literature and popular media, we found little evidence of those concerns in Benton County. Instead, we found Benton County to be a community largely accepting of wind farms.