Boundaries of the coastal zone: A survey of state laws

Abstract

A survey of coastal state legislation reveals several types of statutes affecting activities occurring in coastal regions: Coastal management statutes, wetland statutes, and shoreline statutes. Each coastal state has adopted methods to delineate coastal areas or features, whether an entire coastal zone, a limited feature such as wetlands, or shorelands. Boundary delineation is done according to linear measurements, political boundaries, roads and highways, vegetation, elevation, tidal flow, and other factors. An appendix is provided containing state statutory provisions relating to boundary‐delineation techniques.     

Time-dependent Hyperstar algorithm for robust vehicle navigation

The vehicle navigation problem studied in Bell (2009) is revisited and a time-dependent reverse Hyperstar algorithm is presented. This minimises the expected time of arrival at the destination, and all intermediate nodes, where expectation is based on a pessimistic (or risk-averse) view of unknown link delays. This may also be regarded as a hyperpath version of the Chabini and Lan (2002) algorithm, which itself is a time-dependent A^* algorithm. Links are assigned undelayed travel times and maximum delays, both of which are potentially functions of the time of arrival at the respective link. Probabilities for link use are sought that minimise the driver’s maximum exposure to delay on the approach to each node, leading to the determination of a pessimistic expected time of arrival at the destination and all intermediate nodes. Since the context considered is vehicle navigation, the probability of link use measures link attractiveness, so a link with a zero probability of use is unattractive while a link with a probability of use equal to one will have no attractive alternatives. A solution algorithm is presented and proven to solve the problem provided the node potentials are feasible and a FIFO condition applies to undelayed link travel times. The paper concludes with a numerical example.     

The opinions and attitudes of Louisiana's Coastal Zone residents toward outdoor recreational development: A perspective for planning and management

Abstract

In 1967, a new road facilitated access to a number of small, impoverished, rural communities in a marshy region along Mexico's Pacific coast. One of these—the only one situated on the Pacific shore—began to be visited by an increasing stream of tourists. This article discusses the severe sociocultural problems which the initial phase of tourism development caused in Teacapán, and argues that these are part of a syndrome which is manifest in similar situations worldwide. By anticipating this syndrome before tourism development gets underway, planners and managers of coastal tourism development in Third World nations would be better prepared to mitigate most of its severe effects.     

Sexual risk among female workers on cruise ships

Data were combined from two studies—qualitative interviews with 19 female cruise-ship workers in a Florida port and 192 quantitative interviews conducted with male and female cruise-ship workers in a European and a Florida port. High rates of partner change were reported in the latter sample: 39 % reported two or more sexual partners in the past year. Logistic regression analysis of 16 different variables showed that gender was the variable most strongly independently associated with a new sexual relationship: women were six times more likely than men to report a new private sexual relationship on their last contract (OR 6.20, 95 % confidence interval 2.01–19.09); 39 % of the female crew reported a new private relationship on their last contract, compared to 16 % of the men. Qualitative data suggest some reasons for this gender imbalance: sexual harassment by male superordinates, the taking of a lover for protection from harassment and the liminal character of shipboard life. Parallels are drawn with other studies depicting risk behaviour as situated actions (i.e. shaped by the material and social circumstances in which the action occurs), and with studies which see women’s greater propensity to risk behaviour in some settings as shaped by power relationships.     

Using census aggregates to proxy for household characteristics: an application to vehicle ownership

Traditionally, researchers studying transportation choice have used data either acquired from household surveys or broad, region-wide aggregates. At the disaggregate level, researchers usually do not have access to important variables or observations. This study investigates the potential usefulness of a proxy approach to modeling discrete choice vehicle ownership: substituting narrow area-based aggregate proxies for missing micro-level explanatory variables by accessing large, publicly maintained datasets. We use data from the 2000 Bay Area Travel Survey (BATS) and the contemporaneous U.S. Census file to compare three models of vehicle ownership, drawing area-wide proxies from increasing levels of aggregation. The models with proxies are compared with a parallel model that uses only survey data. The results indicate that the proxy models are preferred in terms of model selection criteria, and predict vehicle ownership as well or better than the survey model. Parameter values produced by the proxy method effectively approximate those returned by household survey models in terms of coefficient sign and significance, particularly when the aggregate variables are representative of their household-level counterparts. The proxy model with the narrowest level of aggregation achieved the best fit, coefficient precision, and percentage of correct prediction.

Thorium-234 derived information on particle residence times and sediment deposition in shallow waters of the south-western Baltic Sea

Activities of the naturally occurring, short-lived and highly particle-reactive radionuclide tracer ²³⁴Th in the dissolved and particulate phase were measured at three shallow-water stations (maximum water depths: 15.6, 22.7 and 30.1 m) in Mecklenburg Bay (south-western Baltic Sea) to constrain the time scales of the dynamics and the depositional fate of particulate matter. Activities of particle-associated (> 0.4 μm) and total (particulate + dissolved) ²³⁴Th were in the range of 0.08–0.11 dpm L^− 1 and 0.11–0.20 dpm L^− 1, respectively. The activity ratio of total ²³⁴Th and its long-lived and conservative parent nuclide ²³⁸U was well below unity (range: 0.09–0.19) indicating substantial radioactive disequilibria throughout the water column, very dynamic trace-metal scavenging and particle export from the water column at all three stations. For the discussion the ²³⁴Th data of this study were combined with previously published water-column ²³⁴Th and particulate-matter data from Mecklenburg Bay (Kersten et al., 1998. Applied Geochemistry 13, 339–347). The resulting average vertical distribution of total ²³⁴Th/²³⁸U disequilibria was used to estimate the depositional ²³⁴Th flux to the sediment. There was a virtually constant net downward flux of ²³⁴Th of about 28 dpm m^− 2 d^− 1 leaving each water layer of one meter thickness. Thorium-234-derived net residence times of particulate material regarding settling from a given layer in the water column were typically on the order of days, but with maximum values of up to a couple of weeks. Based on an average ratio of particulate matter (PM) to particle-associated ²³⁴Th a net flux of about 145 mg PM m^− 2 d^− 1 was estimated to leave each water layer of one meter thickness. The estimated cumulative water-column-derived particulate-matter fluxes at the seafloor are higher by a factor of about 2 than previously published sediment-derived estimates for Mecklenburg Bay. This suggests that about half of the settling particulate material is exported from the study area and/or subject to processes such as mechanical breakdown, remineralisation and dissolution. Lateral particulate-matter redistribution and particle breakdown in the water column (as opposed to the sediment) seem to be favoured by (repeated) particle resuspension from and resettling to the seafloor before ultimate sedimentary burial. The importance of net lateral redistribution of particulate material seems to increase towards the seafloor and be particularly high within the bottommost few meters of the water column.     

Assessing carbon footprint and energy efficiency in competing supply chains: Review - Case studies and benchmarking

This article compares the energy consumption and CO₂ emissions of supply chains in Belgium, France and UK looking in particular at, jeans, yogurts, apples, tomatoes and furniture. We use a generic methodology that allows comparability across the supply chain of products, supply chains, and countries. Our benchmarking show relatively high emissions for maritime transport and the consumer leg, while logistics activities such as storage and road freight exhibit relatively low emissions. The influences of distance, retail type, area density and consumer behaviour are also examined.     

Non-commitment bias in public opinion on transit usage

Estimation of ridership on a new transit system in an area where no comparable service existed before is a difficult task of transit planning. Traditional modal split models cannot be used in these cases, because no data or basis for developing a new model or adjusting a “borrowed” model are available. One of the techniques which can be used in this type of situation, is to perform a “concept test” based on public opinion. This approach, however, is plagued with the phenomenon of non-commitment bias of interviewees, and tends to overestimate the ridership. A new fixed route and fixed schedule transit service in Johnson City in Tennessee provided a rare opportunity to perform an investigation on the non-commitment bias through “before” and “after” surveys. The analysis of the non-commitment and actual responses of a sample of residents revealed substantial bias. Overall, the non-commitment ridership estimate was about twice (100% greater than) the actual ridership.:It was also observed that the bias was higher for persons owning automobiles, and for work and shopping trips.