Community Perspectives Toward a Marine Reserve: A Case Study of San Felipe,Yucatán,México

San Felipe marine reserve, in Yucatán, México, is unique, and particularly suited for a case study because the local community created it without a mandate from higher levels of government. This article presents the results of a survey of local interest groups using the method of paired comparisons and rank correlation analysis, to reveal local judgments about the severity of damages to coastal habitats and the level of impacts of activities that cause the damages. The results show that fishers differ significantly from other interest groups in their rankings of the severity of damages to habitats and of impacting activities. These findings suggest that despite the overlapping interests in protecting the resources and the critical habitats, the different perspectives of local interest groups about the severity of damages must be considered in the management of San Felipe marine reserve.     

Traffic integration and environmental traffic management in Denmark

This paper assesses Danish experience in attempting to integrate traffic with its surroundings in existing areas. Rest and play areas, quiet roads with a 30 km/h speed limit, and major road schemes on urban shopping streets and through villages are all discussed; so too are policies seeking to create safe routes to school, the problems arising from the introduction of speed reduction measures on bus routes, and the merits of area‐wide as opposed to incremental approaches. Evaluations indicate that speed reductions to a maximum of 30 km/h are achievable on local roads, and that the quiet street approach represents a cost‐effective and popular means of achieving environmental improvements and safer, more liveable streets for residents. It is recommended as an appropriate model for Britain to follow. Incremental implementation risks being sub‐optimal in design terms but has distinct advantages in minimizing conflicts and enabling rapid implementation. Evaluations of shopping street and village schemes are incomplete but speed reductions and environmental gains have undoubtedly been achieved.     

Disused shrimp ponds: Options for redevelopment of mangroves

Associated with the rapid increase in the production of cultured marine shrimp has been large‐scale conversion of mangroves to shrimp ponds. Production in many regions has proved to be unsustainable, largely due to inappropriate construction methods, poor environmental conditions, overstocking, and disease. A number of shrimp ponds consequently are unproductive and lie idle. Accurate assessments of pond disuse are difficult to obtain; however, unofficial estimates have suggested that as many as 70% of ponds may be disused after a period in production. Pond construction, shrimp culture, and pond disuse lead to alterations to the physical and chemical properties of soil, hydrological conditions, and the flora and fauna composition of the pond area. The case for restoration, or rehabilitation to a sustainable use, is strong. Consideration must be given to the causes of production failure, the environmental conditions remaining following disuse, the needs and preferences of pond owners and coastal managers, and technical constraints.     

Developing a Spatially Enabled Inventory of Recreational Boats Using Vessel Registration Data

Effective waterway management requires information on the characteristics and locations of boats. A field-based boat census—a traditional method to obtain spatially accurate information—is relatively expensive, time-consuming, and restrictive in scope. Vessel registration data, maintained by all U.S. states, is potentially a more robust information source. This research evaluated the accuracy and reliability of vessel registration data to supply location and attribute information for boats. The study premise was to use vessel registration data, which includes the mailing address of registered boat owners, to develop a spatially enabled inventory of boats. The study area comprised 12,064 salt-water accessible property parcels in two Florida counties. An on-water census (OWC) provided location and characteristics for 5,023 vessels, which were compared to 8,681 vessel registration records linked to the study area. Discrepancies between the OWC and vessel registration data were explained by a stratified, random sample of 485 telephone survey respondents. Study results show that vessel registration data accurately located and characterized roughly 81% of the boat population; in contrast, the OWC accurately located less than 56%. A conclusion is that state vessel registration data is a better alternative than an OWC for locating and characterizing boats kept along waterways.     

Management of corals and coral ecosystems in the United States

Abstract

Corals and coral communities provide substantial societal benefits by virtue of their recreational and esthetic appeal, the habitat provided for commercially harvested fish and shellfish, the structural foundation provided for productive coastal ecosystems, and the market value of harvested coral specimens. Coral resources are subject to adverse effects from pollution, dredging, specimen collecting, anchor damage, commercial fishing, overharvesting, and activities related to offshore petroleum development. Management programs which protect coral resources in the United States comprise a patchwork of separate federal and state programs. They attempt to adapt broad regulatory authorities for parks, fisheries, offshore mineral resources, and other subjects for the purpose of coral conservation. These programs embody species‐specific, area‐specific, and generic approaches to coral management. This paper traces the evolution of U.S. coral management programs and comments on their respective strengths and weaknesses. Alternative approaches for strengthening management systems could include new coordinating committees, legislation, memoranda of agreement between involved agencies, and others.     

Collection, spillback, and dissipation in pedestrian evacuation: A network-based method

We present a method of predicting pedestrian route choice behavior and physical congestion during the evacuation of indoor areas with internal obstacles. Under the proposed method, a network is first constructed by discretizing the space into regular hexagonal cells and giving these cells potentials before a modified cell transmission model is employed to predict the evolution of pedestrian flow in the network over time and space. Several properties of this cell transmission model are explored. The method can be used to predict the evolution of pedestrian flow over time and space in indoor areas with internal obstacles and to investigate the collection, spillback, and dissipation behavior of pedestrians passing through a bottleneck. The cell transmission model is further extended to imitate the movements of multiple flows of pedestrians with different destinations. An algorithm based on generalized cell potential is also developed to assign the pedestrian flow.     

Hubris or humility? Accuracy issues for the next 50 years of travel demand modeling

This study reviews the 50-year history of travel demand forecasting models, concentrating on their accuracy and relevance for public decision-making. Only a few studies of model accuracy have been performed, but they find that the likely inaccuracy in the 20-year forecast of major road projects is ±30 % at minimum, with some estimates as high as ±40–50 % over even shorter time horizons. There is a significant tendency to over-estimate traffic and underestimate costs, particularly for toll roads. Forecasts of transit costs and ridership are even more uncertain and also significantly optimistic. The greatest knowledge gap in US travel demand modeling is the unknown accuracy of US urban road traffic forecasts. Modeling weaknesses leading to these problems (non-behavioral content, inaccuracy of inputs and key assumptions, policy insensitivity, and excessive complexity) are identified. In addition, the institutional and political environments that encourage optimism bias and low risk assessment in forecasts are also reviewed. Major institutional factors, particularly low local funding matches and competitive grants, confound scenario modeling efforts and dampen the hope that technical modeling improvements alone can improve forecasting accuracy. The fundamental problems are not technical but institutional: high non-local funding shares for large projects warp local perceptions of project benefit versus costs, leading to both input errors and political pressure to fund projects. To deal with these issues, the paper outlines two different approaches. The first, termed ‘hubris’, proposes a multi-decade effort to substantially improve model forecasting accuracy over time by monitoring performance and improving data, methods and understanding of travel, but also by deliberately modifying the institutional arrangements that lead to optimism bias. The second, termed ‘humility’, proposes to openly quantify and recognize the inherent uncertainty in travel demand forecasts and deliberately reduce their influence on project decision-making. However to be successful either approach would require monitoring and reporting accuracy, standards for modeling and forecasting, greater model transparency, educational initiatives, coordinated research, strengthened ethics and reduction of non-local funding ratios so that localities have more at stake.     

The visual impact of development in coastal zone areas

Abstract

The focus of this paper is theoretical, as well as methodological. It reviews previous studies of visual impact and reports research by the author on people's evaluation of the appropriateness of different man‐made facilities in different coastal‐area contexts and other environments. In this study, subjects were asked to react to slides developed through the use of landscape models and experimental facilities to simulate the appearance of a building in the landscape, while systematically varying the visual relatedness between the two. Specific interest centered on the variable of congruity vs. contrast between the appearance of the building and its landscape context, manipulated by co‐varying the attributes of color and size to create a five‐point scale of contrast/obtrusiveness. The hypothesis was that judgments of appropriateness, and to a lesser extent judgments of liking, would vary inversely with level of contrast. The role of two further variables, the functional significance of the building in its setting, and the character of the setting itself, was also investigated. The author reviews methodological issues involved where subjects respond to visual stimuli for purposes of judging change in visual quality. These methodological issues include: stimulus‐selection and problems of simulation, choice of response measures, and choice of respondents, and the treatment of individual differences. The author calls for development of standardized scales and indices such as “perceptually‐relevant environmental quality indicators.”