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Estuaries Matter: Connecting Recreation and Sense of Place to Resilience on Cape Cod
Citation:
Mulvaney, K., Marty Chintala, S. Lyon, M. Mazzotta, AND N. Merrill. Estuaries Matter: Connecting Recreation and Sense of Place to Resilience on Cape Cod. Restore America's Estuaries-The Coastal Society Summit, New Orleans, LA, December 10 - 15, 2016.
Impact/Purpose:
The poster will provide information on the social and economic dimensions of work related to SHC 4.61. In particular, it will outline our proposed sense of place and recreation studies for Cape Cod and their application toward understanding resilience.
Description:
People have been living on Cape Cod or visiting its beautiful land and seascapes for generations, and it holds a special place in New England’s heart with many people greatly attached to it. Part of the attraction of the area is the access to water-based recreation in ponds, estuaries, and coastal waters that has led to a thriving tourism industry and growing year-round and retirement communities. Because of its tremendous reliance on water-based tourism, the resilience of the social-ecological system is heavily dependent on the sustainability of water tourism and its related values. This means water quality degradation, including nutrient enrichment, could affect the social fabric of the communities and the local economy. Recreational use and sense of place are two useful social metrics of the value of clean water in coastal areas, but, little work has connected the two. Their coinvestigation should provide a broader understanding of the social-ecological resilience of Cape Cod’s coastal areas. In particular, we seek to better understand four major components of the Cape’s social-ecological system: 1) the extent of recreational use of the different types of waterbodies on the Cape, 2) the combination of characteristics which make the Cape special for its residents and visitors (affect the sense of place), 3) the relationship between recreational use of the Cape’s waterbodies and the sense of place of residents and visitors, and 4) how water quality degradation could alter recreational use or sense of place. These four components provide important insights into the vulnerability of the social-ecological system to impacts from degraded water quality. Water quality, nitrogen concentration in particular, on the Cape is primarily affected by outdated wastewater treatment methods. Most of the Cape is not sewered, and there are a number of cesspools and failed septic systems. Our work is particularly salient as Cape Cod towns seek to meet their nitrogen TMDLs (total maximum daily loads) through complex planning processes and expensive investments in wastewater infrastructure over the upcoming decades. The use of sense of place metrics provides information about how residents and visitors identify with Cape Cod as compared to other areas and the importance of the Cape’s characteristics for their experience. Water-based recreation on the Cape includes swimming, kayaking, birding, surfing, sailing, motorboating, beach walking, and more. Data on the recreational use of the waterbodies provides insights into the use and value of those areas for local communities that is often overlooked in decision making processes. There is very little data on either the sense of place of the Cape’s visitors and residents or the recreational use of the Cape’s waterbodies. Through a mixed methods approach that includes interviews, focus groups, observational studies, and surveys, we aim to fill these critical data gaps.