A novel approach to evaluating water quality impacts on visitation to coastal recreation areas on Cape Cod 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 variations. 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 on visitation to coastal access points. Our results indicate that beach closures on Cape Cod, MA, USA have a significant negative correlation to 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. Future applications of passively collected geocoded data to human-environmental systems are vast.

Marine spatial planning in the UK: A review of the progress and effectiveness of the plans and their policies

Ten years after the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 that introduced marine planning to UK, this article investigates the progress and effectiveness of marine plans. It identifies that initial plans are still being produced in parts of the UK. Scotland has led the way with a National Marine Plan that has already been reviewed. England’s approach has been to produce a sequence of regional plans with two adopted. Wales adopted its National Marine Plan in November 2019 and Northern Ireland’s national marine plans are under preparation. The article examines the effectiveness of the plans through a framework informed by implementation theory assuming that plan-making indicates a ‘top-down’ approach to policy. The plans and their policies are assessed to draw reflections on the soundness of the documents. Marine licensing decisions are considered to assess the extent to which they reflect adopted policies. Limited evidence of the explicit influence of policies in those decisions was established. The findings were supplemented by interviews with key actors including applicants. This revealed a culture of conciliation and cooperation among decision-makers. Analysis and reflection led to positive and challenging conclusions for the future development of marine plan-making in the UK and elsewhere.

Ecological Governance for Offshore Wind Energy in United Kingdom Waters: Has an Effective Legal Framework Been Established for Preventing Ecologically Harmful Development?

The article assesses the United Kingdom’s (uk) legal framework for offshore wind development in light of policy statements of uk Governments that exploitation of this resource should not compromise marine ecosystem functionality. The first part examines the reliance placed on strategic environmental assessment and on permitting for projects to identify and address impacts. It finds that inadequate use has been made of these potentially effective legal tools for preventing ecologically damaging development. The second part considers whether legal requirements for marine spatial planning (Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009) and for improving the condition of Europe’s marine ecosystems (Marine Strategy Framework Directive) bolster the strength of the legal framework for controlling sea uses. It finds encouragement in their holistic approach to regulating the impacts of marine activities, but concludes that they fall short of what would be required to prevent the expansion of the offshore wind sector from causing ecological harm.

Popularizing marine natural history in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain

The literary and pedagogic style of books popularizing marine natural history for the British public shifted during the nineteenth century. Previously, natural history books had been written largely by men, with notable exceptions like Isabella Gifford, Mary Gatty and Mary Roberts. Gentlemen naturalists tended to be clerics or medics; educated men conventionally viewing their interest as revelatory of the Divine in nature. Typically, women were less well educated than men but some from clerical backgrounds, having better access to learning, became significant popularizers of natural history. Gosse's works promoting aquaria and “rock-pooling” (typically among the middle classes), helped to develop a ready market for the plethora of popular seashore books appearing in the 1850s; with coastal access being facilitated by expansion of the railways. Controversies concerning evolution rarely penetrated works aimed at a popular readership. However, the style adopted by marine natural history writers had changed noticeably by the end of the nineteenth century. The earlier conversational dialogue or narrative forms gave way to a more terse scientific style, omitting references to the Divine. Evolutionary ideas were affecting populist texts on littoral natural history, even if only covertly.