Recreational Access Research Articles

Neoliberalism’s influence on recreation access provisions: Municipal recreation practitioners’ perspectives

This study examined neoliberalism’s influence on how access provisions are conceptualized and designed by municipal recreation practitioners. Specific attention is paid to how neoliberalism intersects with practitioners’ conceptualizations and administration of recreation access provisions for low-income citizens. Sixteen municipal recreation practitioners in Atlantic Canada were interviewed. Our findings indicated that practitioners viewed access to municipal recreation for low-income citizens predominantly in terms of financial resources and needing to break down several barriers. Further, four types of recreation access provisions for low-income citizens were administered by practitioners, including fee assistance programs, subsidies for all, one-off scenarios, and robust alternative supports.

Abstract P070: Individual And Environmental Correlates Of Objectively Assessed Physical Activity Levels In Rural Residents

Introduction: Rural communities in the US face disproportionately higher rates of physical inactivity as well as coronary heart disease mortality, when compared to their urban and suburban counterparts. As such, increasing physical activity (PA) and reducing barriers to PA is critical in improving population health. Neighborhood characteristics have been shown to influence PA, but are understudied in rural communities. The current analysis: (1) describes PA patterns in rural mid-western communities, and (2) examines the associations of and interactions between individual and environmental correlates of objectively assessed weekly moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) minutes. Hypotheses: Overall, we expected low levels of weekly MVPA in rural residents; with lower levels anticipated in female, older, and low-income participants. We also expected positive associations of favorable perceptions of the neighborhood environment, trail use, and self-efficacy for PA with weekly MVPA. Finally, the test of interactions between intrapersonal and perceived environmental factors in relation to weekly MVPA is exploratory. Methods: Telephone surveys were conducted with 280 adults in 14 rural southeast Missouri communities, who were also asked to wear accelerometer devices for seven days. Participants were recruited via address-based sampling, and at local community events. Participants self-reported demographic information (age, sex, income), individual level behavioral factors (self-efficacy for PA, trail use) and neighborhood environment perceptions (indoor recreational access, safety from traffic, home neighborhood environment). Weekly MVPA minutes were assessed using the accelerometry data. Generalized linear mixed models using a negative binomial distribution were used examining associations of and interactions between individual characteristics and environmental correlates with weekly MVPA (Analyses were conducted using STATA V15). Results: Participants had a weekly average of 97 minutes MVPA, with 21% meeting PA guidelines. Increased age and being female were significantly associated with lower weekly MVPA. Additionally, increased self-efficacy and trail use were significantly associated with higher weekly MVPA. When exploring interaction effects, there was a significant interaction between gender and safety from traffic. For females, increased perceived safety from traffic was associated with lower MVPA. Conclusions: Rural residents have low levels of PA with less than a quarter meeting PA guidelines (75 minutes of vigorous and/or 150 minutes of moderate PA per week). Specifically, female residents face disproportionately lower levels of MVPA, with only 75 weekly minutes compared to 135 weekly minutes in males. Promoting trail use and targeting self efficacy for PA, may be effective strategies for increasing PA in rural residents.

Keeping citizens living with low incomes at arm’s length away: the responsibilization of municipal recreation access provisions

ABSTRACT Through the lens of neoliberalism, the purpose of this paper is to illustrate the techniques of responsibilization in municipal recreation access provisions. Using data from interviews with 16 municipal recreation administrators in Atlantic Canada, we trace responsibilization through fiscal policies and administration schemes characterizing four neoliberalism tenets: privatization, efficiency, individualism, and accountability. Our findings identified four techniques of responsibilization embedded in access provisions for low-income citizens: 1) privatizing recreation provisions by off-loading programming responsibility; 2) not advertising financial assistance programmes and other informal financial support; 3) assuming accessing financial assistance programs is easy, and 4) verifying low-income status. The responsibilization inherent in these access provisions cultivates relational distance, which we suggest challenges the provisions’ ‘accessible’ nature.

Nature-Based Placemaking: A Natural Asset Focused Community Vibrancy Roadmap

This paper explores opportunities for outdoor recreation and education programs to support communities working to sustain or increase community vibrancy. Vibrancy is necessarily linked to our natural environment and the quality of and access to natural environments can impact community vibrancy outcomes. Outdoor recreation access and experiences support relationships with place via natural assets. A community’s natural assets and associated recreation, ecosystem services, economic, and broader wellbeing benefits collectively serve to elevate community vibrancy. Nature-based Placemaking (NBP) is an emerging community development framework that builds on a community’s natural assets to bolster community vibrancy. NBP could serve as a roadmap for nature-based community vibrancy efforts, providing direction and considerations for navigating vibrancy related challenges and opportunities. This work provides an NBP overview, outlines embedded concepts that informed development of the framework, explores its initial application, and poses questions and pathways for expanding and refining the NBP framework for broader applicability.

Bold Moves for Visitor Use Management: Public Health, Public Engagement and Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion

Public land management is inherently complex and requires a systems approach that integrates ecological, economic, and social values. Currently, there are few tools and examples available for federal land management planning that use a systems approach. Issues are often approached from a disciplinary perspective, and outdoor recreation problems, assumptions, and solutions often focus too narrowly on how to mitigate recreation impacts as opposed to understanding the broader role of visitor use and access, public engagement, and public health in sustainable land management. The Visitor Use Management Framework (the Framework), developed by the Interagency Visitor Use Management Council (IVUMC, 2016) provides interagency guidance for managing public use on federal lands and waters. The Framework uses a process that can be incorporated into existing agency planning and decision making. It follows all of the Council agencies’ (NPS, BLM, USFS, USFWS, ACoE, NOAA) planning principles and illustrates how to specifically address visitor experiences and resource protection with an integrated planning approach. This research note explores the evolving role of the Framework in sustainable recreation management and how public health, public engagement, and representation, inclusion, and access can be incorporated throughout the Framework to ensure planning decisions meet the needs, values, and preferences of diverse user groups. Further, this paper invites a broader discussion around next steps for boldly moving to integrate public health, public engagement, and representation, inclusion, and access more fully into all aspects of visitor use management, including the Framework. Collective effort and ongoing innovation is needed to ensure that the Framework is thoughtfully implemented in ways that provide opportunities to enhance outdoor recreation access and inclusion for a broader range of people.

Flight plan for the future: floatplane pilots and researchers team up to predict invasive species dispersal in Alaska

Aircraft can transport aquatic invasive species (AIS) from urban sources to remote waterbodies, yet little is known about this long-distance pathway. In North America and especially Alaska, aircraft with landing gear for water called floatplanes are used for recreation access to remote, often road-less wilderness destinations. Human-mediated dispersal of AIS is particularly concerning for the conservation of pristine wildlands, yet resource managers are often challenged by limited monitoring and response capacity given the vast areas they manage. We collected pathway data through a survey with floatplane pilots and used a Bayesian hierarchical model to inform early detection in a data-limited situation. The study was motivated by Alaska’s first known AIS, Elodea spp. (Elodea) and its floatplane-related dispersal. For 682 identified floatplane destinations, a Bayesian hierarchical model predicts the chance of flights originating from AIS source locations in freshwater and estimates the expected number of flights from these sources. Model predictions show the potential for broad spread across remote regions currently not known to have Elodea and informed monitoring and early detection efforts. Our result underlines the small window of opportunity for Arctic conservation strategies targeting an AIS free Arctic. We recommend management that focuses on long-distance connectivity, keeping urban sources free of AIS. We discuss applicability of the approach for other data-limited situations supporting data-informed AIS management responses.

Revenue and Distributional Consequences of Alternative Outdoor Recreation Pricing Mechanisms: Evidence from a Micropanel Data Set

This article uses a system of Poisson demand equations to examine the revenue potential associated with uniform, site-differentiated, and income-differentiated recreational access fees for more than 130 lakes in the state of Iowa. We also consider optimal fees in the spirit of Ramsey (1927) and demonstrate how the new insights from Banzhaf and Smith (2022) can empirically inform discussions of user fees. We find that user fees could be used to raise revenue for the maintenance of recreation infrastructure, but that they are generally regressive. Fees differentiated by income groups can attenuate (but not eliminate) this regressivity.

Cross-Cultural Leadership Enables Collaborative Approaches to Management of Kauri Dieback in Aotearoa New Zealand

In Aotearoa/New Zealand, the soilborne pathogen Phytophthora agathidicida threatens the survival of the iconic kauri, and the ecosystem it supports. In 2011, a surveillance project to identify areas of kauri dieback caused by Phytophthora agathidicida within the Waitākere Ranges Regional Park (WRRP) highlighted the potential impact of the pathogen. A repeat of the surveillance in 2015/16 identified that approximately a quarter of the kauri area within the Regional Park was infected or possibly infected, an increase from previous surveys. The surveillance program mapped 344 distinct kauri areas and showed that 33.4% of the total kauri areas were affected or potentially affected by kauri dieback and over half (58.3%) of the substantial kauri areas (above 5 ha in size) were showing symptoms of kauri dieback. Proximity analysis showed 71% of kauri dieback zones to be within 50 m of the track network. Spatial analysis showed significantly higher proportions of disease presence along the track network compared to randomly generated theoretical track networks. Results suggest that human interaction is assisting the transfer of Phytophthora agathidicida within the area. The surveillance helped trigger the declaration of a cultural ban (rāhui) on recreational access. Te Kawerau ā Maki, the iwi of the area, placed a rāhui over the kauri forest eco-system of the Waitākere Forest (Te Wao Nui o Tiriwa) in December 2017. The purpose of the rāhui was to help prevent the anthropogenic spread of kauri dieback, to provide time for investment to be made into a degraded forest infrastructure and for research to be undertaken, and to help protect and support forest health (a concept encapsulated by the term mauri). Managing the spread and impact of the pathogen remains an urgent priority for this foundation species in the face of increasing pressures for recreational access. Complimentary quantitative and qualitative research programs into track utilization and ecologically sensitive design, collection of whakapapa seed from healthy and dying trees, and remedial phosphite treatments are part of the cross-cultural and community-enabled biosecurity initiatives to Kia Toitu He Kauri “Keep Kauri Standing”.

Facilitating recreation programs and services for low-income citizens: practitioners’ challenges and strategies

ABSTRACT Rationale Recreation practitioners in the public and non-profit sectors are key in supporting community residents’ well-being through the facilitation of recreation programs and services; however, practitioners are working under the influence of neoliberalism governance, which challenges practitioners’ ability to support low-income citizens’ participation in recreation. Through the lens of neoliberalism, this paper aims to explore practitioners’ challenges and strategies towards implementing recreation programs and services targeted at low-income citizens and discusses the implications it has on recreation programs and services for low-income citizens. Method Semi-structured phone interviews were conducted with 18 practitioners who design and implement recreation programs and access provisions for low-income citizens. Findings Practitioners faced multiple constraints while employing a variety of solutions to deliver provisions to low-income citizens, including (1) Limited resources: doing more with less, (2) Spreading the word, and (3) Enhancing program access through program relocation, and (4) Reducing program costs. Implications Facilitating access to and participation in recreation for low-income citizens is complex and requires multiple practitioner-led solutions that consider the broader structural factors of living in poverty. Research contribution This study provides insight into the challenges practitioners experienced as they employed different strategies to support low-income citizens’ participation in recreation, and more particularly, provides an understanding of how such strategies and challenges impact recreation programs and services for low-income citizens.

Payments for forest-based ecosystem services in the United States: Magnitudes and trends

This manuscript reports on an effort to account, estimate, and document, to the fullest extent possible, direct payments for ecosystem services to private forest landowners in the United States. This includes payments derived from markets, subsidies, and hybrid approaches, from both governmental and non-governmental sources. Data were compiled from government agencies, public registries, and surveys of market participants. In some cases full reporting of program/market payments and forest area enrolled was possible. In other cases estimation was necessary, including averaging and interpolation by state and year, to create a conservative and comprehensive understanding of the nature, magnitude, and trends of programs and markets that provide payments for forest-based ecosystem services (PFES). Programs and markets were classified by categories of ecosystem services supported (carbon sequestration and storage, water quality and watershed protection, wildlife habitat, and bundled services), as well as payment mechanism (public payments, compliance transactions, and voluntary transactions). Findings show that estimated total PFES averaged $3.3 billion per year (2015 dollars), or about $17.69 per hectare of private forest per year over the decade 2010–19. This includes an average of $176 million per year for carbon, $889 million per year for water, $1529 million per year for wildlife habitat, and $754 million per year for bundled services. Hunting leases in particular are the largest payment source for private forest landowners, and have grown substantially up to $1.6 billion in 2016. At the same time, compliance and voluntary markets for carbon and water have also grown. In particular, the establishment of a market for carbon offsets within California’s cap-and-trade program has increased the size of forest carbon offset markets by two orders of magnitude from $3 million in 2010 to $326 million in 2019. However, public programs connected to PFES have steadily decreased in real dollar terms over time, as has participating land area. Various states and regions in the U.S. have higher or lower level of PFES connected to different service categories, for various apparent reasons. Results suggest that some small, highly-urban states received high levels of payments for conservation easements. Other states with a large agricultural land base relative to forestry received relatively high levels of public conservation program payments. Some states with both large private forest area and large urban centers had high values of payments for recreational access, such as hunting and wildlife viewing.

Effects of Reservoir Levels on Arizona National Recreation Area Visitation, Visitor Spending, and Local Economies

AbstractThis study estimates the effects of reservoir levels on demand for recreation visits to Lake Powell (Glen Canyon National Recreation Area [NRA]) and Lake Mead NRA, correlating reservoir levels with overnight and total recreation visits. We also consider the effects of closures of recreation access points (such as launch ramps or marinas) when lake levels fall below critical thresholds. Our overall results are similar to past studies, but find that the access point closures are a more robust predictor of visits than simple elevation measures. Policies that manage the Colorado River, including those that seek to maintain reservoir levels above critical levels with the primary goal of preventing water delivery cutbacks, also affect recreation demand and the economies of nearby communities. Our analysis maps changes in visits (from changing elevations) to changes in visitor spending, recreationist user benefits, and regional economic indicators such as value added and employment. Such indicators could be used in future benefit‐cost or economic impact analyses of Colorado River water management policies.

Grassification and Fast-Evolving Fire Connectivity and Risk in the Sonoran Desert, United States

In the southwestern United States, non-native grass invasions have increased wildfire occurrence in deserts and the likelihood of fire spread to and from other biomes with disparate fire regimes. The elevational transition between desertscrub and montane grasslands, woodlands, and forests generally occurs at ∼1,200 masl and has experienced fast suburbanization and an expanding wildland-urban interface (WUI). In summer 2020, the Bighorn Fire in the Santa Catalina Mountains burned 486 km2and prompted alerts and evacuations along a 40-km stretch of WUI below 1,200 masl on the outskirts of Tucson, Arizona, a metropolitan area of >1M people. To better understand the changing nature of the WUI here and elsewhere in the region, we took a multidimensional and timely approach to assess fire dynamics along the Desertscrub-Semi-desert Grassland ecotone in the Catalina foothills, which is in various stages of non-native grass invasion. The Bighorn Fire was principally a forest fire driven by a long-history of fire suppression, accumulation of fine fuels following a wet winter and spring, and two decades of hotter droughts, culminating in the hottest and second driest summer in the 125-yr Tucson weather record. Saguaro (Carnegia gigantea), a giant columnar cactus, experienced high mortality. Resprouting by several desert shrub species may confer some post-fire resiliency in desertscrub. Buffelgrass and other non-native species played a minor role in carrying the fire due to the patchiness of infestation at the upper edge of the Desertscrub biome. Coupled state-and-transition fire-spread simulation models suggest a marked increase in both burned area and fire frequency if buffelgrass patches continue to expand and coalesce at the Desertscrub/Semi-desert Grassland interface. A survey of area residents six months after the fire showed awareness of buffelgrass was significantly higher among residents that were evacuated or lost recreation access, with higher awareness of fire risk, saguaro loss and declining property values, in that order. Sustained and timely efforts to document and assess fast-evolving fire connectivity due to grass invasions, and social awareness and perceptions, are needed to understand and motivate mitigation of an increasingly fire-prone future in the region.

Human and environmental associates of local species-specific abundance in a multi-species deer assemblage

Understanding how habitat, landscape context, and human disturbance influence local species-specific deer density provides evidence informing strategic management of increasing deer populations. Across an extensive (187 km2) heterogeneous forest-mosaic landscape in eastern England, spatially explicit density surface models of roe deer Capreolus capreolus and introduced muntjac Muntiacus reevesi were calibrated by thermal imaging distance sampling (recording 1590 and 400 muntjac and roe deer groups, respectively, on 567 km of driven transects). Models related deer density to local habitat composition, recreational intensity, and deer density (roe deer models controlled for muntjac density and vice versa) at a local grain across 1162 composite transect segments, incorporating geographical coordinates accounting for spatial autocorrelation. Abundance of both species was lower in localities with more grasslands (inter-quartile, IQ, effect size: roe −2.9 deer/km2; muntjac −2.9 deer/km2). Roe abundance (mean = 7 deer/km2, SD = 6) was greater in localities with more young stands (IQ effect size, + 1.3 deer/km2) and lower at localities with more recreationists (−1.1 deer/km2). Muntjac density (mean = 21 deer/km2, SD = 10) was greater in localities with more recreationists (+ 2.4 deer/km2), with more mature (≥ 46 years) stands (+ 1.5 deer/km2), or calcareous soil (+ 7.1 deer/km2). Comparison of models incorporating candidate variables and models comprising geographical coordinates only shows candidate variables to be weak predictors of deer densities. Adapting forest management to manipulate habitat and recreational access may influence local deer densities, but only subtly: effect sizes are not sufficient to mitigate deer impacts through planting vulnerable tree crops in areas avoided by deer. Effective culling remains the most viable management option.

Who visits U.S. national parks (and who doesn’t)? A national study of perceived constraints and vacation preferences across diverse populations

The mission of the U.S. National Park Service (NPS) is increasingly challenged by underrepresentation of visitors from low-income and racial/ethnic minority backgrounds. To better understand attributes of Americans who do and do not visit national parks, we used data from a national general population survey (N = 4,103) to examine the sociodemographic characteristics, constraints to visitation, and vacation preferences among three groups of NPS visitors (recent visitors, past visitors, and non-visitors). Results revealed significant differences in constraints and preferences among the three groups. Black, Hispanic, and lower-income respondents were least likely to visit NPS sites. Compared to White respondents, they were also less aware of NPS units, more concerned about safety, and more likely to prefer alternative vacations such as sporting events, theme parks, and socially and culturally oriented destinations. Results underscore the need for the NPS to enhance relevancy and diversity by providing attractive and accessible recreation opportunities for historically marginalized groups.

Economic Analysis of Recreation Access at a Lake Facing Water Crisis due to Municipal Water Demand

Economic Analysis of Recreation Access at a Lake Facing Water Crisis due to Municipal Water Demand

Abstract P205: A National Study Examining Association Between Frequency Of Cannabis Use And Demographic, Socioeconomic, And Behavioral Risk Factors

Background: Cannabis use is becoming increasingly common. Yet, little is known about the frequency of past month cannabis use and how it is associated with demographic, socioeconomic and behavioral risk factors. Hypothesis: Vulnerable populations will have higher frequency of cannabis use. Individuals that have lower socioeconomic status, and or other behavioral risk factors (e.g. smoking) will have higher frequency of use compared to non-users. Methods: We combined four years (2016-2019), of the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey (BRFSS), a large national survey of adults conducted annually by the CDC. The large sample size (unweighted N = 394,285) allowed the categorization of cannabis use. We examined the distribution of use and categorized past 30 day use into four categories: non-use (0 days, 90.7%), infrequent use (1-5 days, 2.9%), frequent use (6-29 days, 3.0%) and daily use (30 days, 3.3%). The subcategorizations of cannabis use frequency were treated as an ordinal variable. Ordinal logistic regression was performed to examine the association of the frequency of cannabis use with demographics (age, gender race/ethnicity, marital status), socioeconomic (educational attainment, employment status, annual household income), and behavioral (access to legal cannabis, smoking status, e-cigarette use, alcohol use and risky alcohol use) factors. Results: A multivariate ordinal logistic regression analysis showed that being male (Adjusted Odds Ratio (AOR) = 1.51; 95% CI: 1.41, 1.61), black (AOR = 1.55; 95%CI: 1.40, 1.72), unemployed (AOR = 1.19; 95%CI: 1.11-1.29), having access to legal medical (AOR = 1.22; 95%CI: 1.12, 1.32) or recreational (AOR = 2.52; 95%CI: 2.30, 2.76) cannabis, were associated with greater frequency of cannabis consumption. In addition, smoking tobacco (AOR = 2.18; 95%CI: 2.00, 2.37), e-cigarettes use (AOR = 3.51; 95%CI: 3.08, 4.01), past month alcohol use (AOR = 1.96; 95%CI: 1.81, 2.13) and binge drinking (AOR = 1.78; 95%CI: 1.63, 1.94) were also associated with greater frequency of cannabis consumption. Being older (AOR = 0.18; 95%CI: 0.15, 0.20), Asian (AOR = 0.66; 95%CI: 0.55, 0.79), Hispanic (AOR = 0.67; 95%CI: 0.60, 0.75), married (AOR = 0.56; 95%CI: 0.52, 0.60), and higher income (AOR = 0.87; 95%CI: 0.79, 0.97) were all associated with lower frequency of cannabis use. Conclusion: The most salient factors associated with greater frequency of cannabis use had to do with low socioeconomic status, recreational access to cannabis, and use of substances such as cigarette smoking and alcohol consumption. Vulnerable populations had high odds of cannabis use, and frequent cannabis use was associated with health behaviors that increase cardiovascular risk.

Linking standard Economic Account for Forestry and ecosystem accounting: Total forest incomes and environmental assets in publicly-owned conifer farms in Andalusia-Spain

A major problem faced by government as trustee of society charged with conserving the nation's forest environmental asset is that the standard Economic Account for Forestry (EAF) fails to measure the contribution of nature to total forest incomes and environmental assets. In the context of this government mission, the debate arises with regard to how to uncover the contribution of nature to the total forest incomes enjoyed by people through a refined accounting framework which extends the EAF. The latter is applied by the statistics office to estimate the values added of timber, firewood, cork, resin, industrial nut and other non-woody final products of the forest at national/sub-national scale. Bearing in mind this narrow scope of the EAF, this research proposes the application of the experimental Agroforestry Accounting System (AAS), which extends the forest incomes and environmental asset estimates by applying simulated exchange values stated/revealed by consumers for non-market public goods and services. We apply the EAF and AAS frameworks to 12 large publicly-owned protected conifer forest farms which are not available for sale on the competitive land market and which cover an area of 47,262 ha in Andalusia-Spain. In this conifer farm case study, the EAF considers the economic activities of timber, firewood, aromatic plants and residential service. The AAS adds to the EAF activities those of grazing, conservation forestry, hunting, livestock, agricultural crops, livestock-keeper private amenity, fire services, free access recreation, mushrooms, carbon, landscape conservation, threatened wild biodiversity and water supply runoff stored lower down the watershed in public reservoirs. The objectives of this conifer farm case study are, first, to compare the final products and incomes estimated by applying the EAF and AAS frameworks and, second, to measure the sensitivity of conifer farm environmental assets to changes in land ownership rights and discounting rates in accordance with the AAS results. The conifer farm results show total income measured by the AAS is 38 times higher than the EAF net value added (NVA) for the 2010 period. The AAS economic activities of forestry conservation, fire services and landscape conservation activities generate 71% of the conifer farm labour compensation. The AAS opening environmental asset measured at the assumed competitive real baseline discounting rate of 3% is 6371.6 €/ha, which is 3.7 times lower than it would be if the conifer farm was available for sale on the competitive land market. The change in the baseline discounting rate chosen, from 3% to 1.5%, would lead to an increase of 116% in the value of the opening environmental asset. The above results reveal the inconsistent EAF measurement of total conifer farm incomes. The sensitivity analysis underlines the important effects on the environmental asset arising from changes in land ownership rights and discounting rates.

Managing Lake Urmia, Iran for diverse restoration objectives: Moving beyond a uniform target lake level

Study RegionLake Urmia, Iran. Study focusThere is widespread interest in restoring drying saline lakes. At Iran’s hypersaline Lake Urmia, managers have sought a uniform target lake level of 1274.1 m above sea level to lower salinity below 263 g L−1 and recover Artemia to sufficient densities to support flamingos. We suggest that addressing a broader range of objectives will allow more flexibility for managing the lake. We define eight restoration objectives to lower salinity, sustain Artemia and flamingo populations, separate islands from each other and the mainland, reduce lakebed dust, maintain commercially valuable ions, and improve recreational access from resort beaches. We use 40 years of experimental, field, satellite, and model data to relate each objective to lake level. We describe variations through time and associated uncertainties for meeting each objective. New hydrological insightsWe show that:1) Lake variations prevent setting a precise target restoration level; 2) The current target may not sufficiently lower salinity to recover Artemia to sufficient densities to support flamingos; 3) Restoration objectives do not converge to a single lake level; tradeoffs are murky; 4) Lake Urmia managers should focus on multiple ecosystem services and track how they are met as lake level varies over time; and 5) As information about the lake improves, managers should adapt their management strategies to meet the most attainable objectives.

People, nature and large herbivores in a shared landscape: A mixed‐method study of the ecological and social outcomes from agriculture and conservation

Abstract In this exploratory study, we employ an interdisciplinary approach to explore potential synergies and trade‐offs between the needs of people and nature in the context of agroecological farming and nature conservation. Ecological field studies and management surveys from six sites were combined with a participatory‐deliberative appraisal exercise using the Multi‐Criteria Mapping (MCM) method. All six study sites and all four land use options in the appraisal were characterised by the use of large herbivores for agricultural and/or conservation purposes, to varying degrees, and were located in South‐East England. MCM participants identified habitat and species diversity, soil health, food production, provision of education and recreational access, as the principal benefits associated with successful management of such sites. Taken overall, their appraisals indicated that a combination of land uses may be best suited to delivering these diverse benefits, but with agroecological (While organic and biodynamic agriculture are subject to legal definition, agroecology offers a more flexible approach and can be viewed as ‘a development pathway from input‐intensive industrial systems through to highly sustainable, ecological systems’—see Laughton, R. (2017) ‘A Matter of Scale’, Land Workers Alliance and Centre for Agroecology, Coventry University) farming being perceived as a particularly effective multi‐purpose option. Five of the six sites were used for recreational purposes, and in total we recorded five times more humans than wild mammals. Ecological data from the sites indicated that the most conservation‐oriented sites performed best in terms of species richness and activity (birds, mammals, bats and invertebrates) and number of species of conservation concern. However, beta diversity metrics indicated important variation in the species assemblages recorded within and between sites. Whereas both agroecological farms in our study produced the greatest weight of saleable meat per unit area, the site that produced the most meat also demonstrated consistently strong performance across many biodiversity metrics. Overall, expert perspectives and the performance of our study sites suggests that combinations of diverse approaches to the management of large herbivores, within a ‘wildlife‐friendly’ envelope, are consistent with providing for the diverse needs of people and nature within shared landscapes. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.

Modeling estrogenic activity in streams throughout the Potomac and Chesapeake Bay watersheds.

Endocrine-disrupting compounds (EDCs), specifically estrogenic endocrine-disrupting compounds, vary in concentration and composition in surface waters under the influence of different landscape sources and landcover gradients. Estrogenic activity in surface waters may lead to adverse effects in aquatic species at both individual and population levels, often observed through the presence of intersex and vitellogenin induction in male fish. In the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, located on the mid-Atlantic coast of the USA, intersex has been observed in several sub-watersheds where previous studies have identified specific landscape sources of EDCs in tandem with observed fish health effects. Previous work in the Potomac River Watershed (PRW), the largest basin within the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, was leveraged to build random forest regression models to predict estrogenic activity at unsampled reaches in both the Potomac River and larger Chesapeake Bay Watersheds (CBW). Model outputs including important variables, partial dependence plots, and predicted values of estrogenic activity at unsampled reaches provide insight into drivers of estrogenic activity at different seasons and scales. Using the US Environmental Protection Agency effects-based threshold of 1.0ng/L 17 β-estradiol equivalents, catchments predicted to exceed this value were categorized as at risk for adverse effects from exposure to estrogenic compounds and evaluated relative to healthy watersheds and recreation access locations throughout the PRW. Results show immediate catchment scale models are more reliable than upstream models, and the best predictive variables differ by season and scale. A small percentage of healthy watersheds (< 13%) and public access sites were classified as at risk using the "Total" (annual) model in the CBW. This study is the first Potomac River Watershed assessment of estrogenic activity, providing a new foundation for future risk assessment and management design efforts, with additional context provided for the entire Chesapeake Bay Watershed.